


The Bloom of Youth

by AndreaLyn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29180511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Nicky should have known that secretly developing a drug to give Andy back her immortality wasn't his best idea, but he didn't realize just how much might go wrong. Joe, Nicky and Andy are physically seventeen from the fallout of some very ill-advised trials of the drug, leaving Nile, Copley, and Booker to deal with three very old immortals suddenly re-discovering teenage hormones and emotions.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 42
Kudos: 167
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Ame_Shindou for the art, which you'll find within the piece, and to Tove for the beta of this! While the characters are physically aged down in this, they will retain their memories throughout the whole thing.

It’s been five years since the incident with Merrick. Five years since Andy’s immortality gave way and it became her time. In that time, they’ve let Copley find jobs that suit their particular skill set while steering away from the too-dangerous tasks they might have taken before. While they work, right under Andy’s nose, there’s been another mission that they’re focusing on that she knows nothing about -- an attempt to chemically re-induce her immortality. 

There’s no point telling her about it until there’s something to say.

For five years, their hopes remain high, but nothing comes of it. Then, one warm day in June, Copley gets a call on his phone that changes everything. They’re having lunch in Vienna and Nile has been stealing Nicky’s strudel while he’s not looking (his attention split on the sidewalk to make sure they’re not catching too much attention). “You’re sure,” Copley asks.

Nicky turns his attention to Copley. The tone is worrying, mainly because it’s so full of _hope_. Their missions don’t usually afford that kind of positivity. Copley digs out a notepad and scrawls a few notes, murmuring ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in random intervals on the phone to whoever he’s speaking to.

When Nicky looks down at his plate, his strudel is gone.

He tips his head to the side to give Nile a chiding look. “You kept looking away,” she protests her innocence. “It’s not my fault.” 

“Sometimes, you can be a child,” he tells her, but it’s not meant to be an insult. It’s the weariness of a man who is nearly a thousand years old and who doesn’t do things like steal his teammates’ desserts, at least, not without asking first. “Who was that?” he asks Copley.

Copley’s staring at his notepad, almost like he can’t believe it. “It was my research contact from the project you asked me to look into, the one here in town.”

Even without Andy here, he’s defaulted to secrecy and not naming the task outright. 

It does the trick. Suddenly, he has Nile and Nicky’s full attention. “And?” Nile prods. 

“They think they’ve got something. Limited samples and untested, but they think it’s worth a try.” 

The word makes Nicky flinch slightly, because ‘testing’ is a dirty word under their roof. Nicky forces himself to push through it, because Andy is mortal now and they’re not about to force an untested regimen on her when it might kill her. He is not sure how they will test it. None of them are mortal, and the idea of bringing in someone else and making them immortal has ethical implications Nicky doesn’t want to face.

“Bring the samples to us. We’ll decide what we do next,” he says, deciding that they will be better in their hands.

If nothing else, he can get them away from Copley and the scientists, who might try to test them out. Copley nods and dials his contact to initiate the exchange, giving Nile and Nicky a moment to themselves. 

“You think this will work?” Nile asks, as Nicky digs out Euros to pay their bill, texting Joe the update so he’s in the loop.

“I think it’s safer in our hands than anyone else’s.” 

It would be nice to think it works, but even if it does, what then? Nicky still strongly believes this should be Andy’s choice, even though he also knows that there is a strong chance she will choose to seek her immortality, if only for a chance at a life with Quynh. “Once we have the samples and figure out a plan, we will need to make sure the formula is destroyed along with the research. Can you take care of it?”

“Copy that,” Nile agrees, eyeing Copley as they wait for him to finish his conversation. “Once we have everything, I’ll make sure there’s nothing left.” They’ve got plenty of steps to worry about before it comes to that, though. “Come on, let’s go back to the safehouse.”

“And will you buy me a strudel to make up for what you stole?”

“Stole?” she echoes, staring at him innocently. “There’s no evidence I did anything.”

Joe had once coined Nicky’s expression of displeasure as ‘the sixth ice age’ and yet, even when he aims it at Nile, she seems to be completely immune, which is a very frustrating thing for a man who’s trying to stay annoyed. There is little time to focus on Nile’s immaturity when Copley returns to them with a pick-up address which is close. 

“We’ll get the samples on the way back to the apartment,” Copley verifies, handing Nicky the address.

“Yes, by a very nice strudel shop,” Nicky agrees, burning a gaze into the back of Nile’s head.

Copley, sensing that he’s missing something, takes the lead as they head to the address. Nile still refuses to give ground and it is taking every ounce of Nicky’s patience not to stick his tongue out at her in a burst of ridiculous immaturity, but still, it is a very close thing. He reminds himself that he will simply mention this whole thing to Joe later and probably come away with three times the strudel he needs, which settles his irritation.

Does that stop Nicky from giving Nile an extremely pointed look when Copley goes into the apartment to pick up the vials and they’re in front of the strudel shop?

No, it absolutely does not.

“Oh, _fine_ ,” Nile huffs. “If it’ll stop you being such a brat.”

“I am a mature adult,” he counters, and does not stick his tongue out as he accepts the package from her after she’s ventured into the shop. He is, of course, a mature victorious adult who will enjoy his strudel later. “ _Grazie_ , Nile,” he says smugly.

“Asshole,” she accuses with a smirk. 

Because he is mature and not vindictive and petty (at least, not with family), he tips the container to her so she can pick from it as they wait for Copley. While they wait, Nicky’s appetite is a fierce thing and he suspects the stress-eating comes from his worries about this drug they’re about to take possession of.

Is he worried that it will not work?

Or is he worried that it will, and his own beliefs will be challenged? 

For a man who believes in everything having its time, he knows it’s hypocritical to seek something that will prolong Andy’s life. Not only that, he knows there is a selfish desire within him to see it successful.

If this works, then he and Joe will have it for themselves, too. 

They will never have to part, not if they don’t want to.

Copley returns with a discreet brown bag, which he hands directly to Nicky. He’s glad that Copley isn’t under the mistaken impression that he is in any kind of control here. “Their research?” he checks. 

“They’re delivering copies to me soon.”

Nicky nods, tightening his grip. “And an antidote?” If they are going to give this to Andy, he wants a backup plan. Not that he’s made a decision yet about giving it to her, but he wants to be prepared. It’s years of experience that have built this cautious shell around himself, but each protective layer is from learning the hard way.

“Also in progress. I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Nicky says, calmly staring at Copley. 

He does not move, so Nile has to step in. “We’ll see you then,” she says.

While they are working with Copley, there is still an absence of trust. It’s why they don’t let him see where their safehouse is. They both stand there waiting for Copley to depart before they make a move towards their safehouse, taking the long way on the off chance they’re being followed.

Nile had asked if it’s really necessary to be this paranoid.

Andy had reminded her of the number of companies who might do anything to snake Merrick’s property, considering that Merrick hadn’t been _subtle_ when talking about his shiny new discoveries. It had earned a look of guilt between Joe, Nicky, and Nile, given that they weren’t helping that by asking scientists to develop solutions to Andy’s mortality, effectively putting their secret into the world. 

Finally, they arrive home. Andy is reading in her bedroom, the door closed. It’s a clear sign as any that she doesn’t want to be disturbed. 

Within minutes of their arrival, Joe returns as well. He crosses the room to press a hand to Nile’s back, leaning over to kiss Nicky as he hands him a bag of fresh ingredients from the market. 

“I got your text about Copley’s package,” Joe says, brows raised. “Is it…?”

Nicky nods, having put the vials away so that Andy doesn’t ask questions. “I put them in the spice rack. Testing is still required.”

“Ah,” is all Joe manages, with a knowing nod. “Then we don’t know if it’s safe for Andy to take it.”

“No,” Nicky agrees, staring at the cabinets which hold the vials. It’s in plain sight, but he thinks that will work for them. Andy doesn’t do the cooking and the rest of them know they exist. For now, it’s best to keep Andy ignorant of their existence.

They both know what needs to be done. There are only so many vials of the drug and they will need to be tested. While Nicky hasn’t asked, he suspects that he knows Joe’s opinion -- Booker is already in exile and serving his punishment, and it’s not right to put this on Nile. That leaves only him and Joe, unless they want to chase down Booker and force him to try out the drug to determine if it’s lethal or not.

They don’t know where Booker is, though, and Nicky is not entirely sure that he wants to waste time. 

Besides, there is a plan in his mind percolating like coffee, bubbling as it heats up. Nicky suspects it is his own need for control that has him thinking that someone that they _trust_ should be testing it.

And who does Nicky trust more than himself or Joe? No one. 

Given that the vials may cause terrible side effects, that rules out Joe. It means that Nicky is already beginning to think that the best way to do this is to test it himself. That thought comes with a slew of emotions (and not all of them positive), which is why he buries it down and focuses on cooking dinner for everyone. 

Joe wraps his arms around Nicky from behind, kissing his neck and brushing his fingers over his collarbone. He laughs, low and sultry, and sucks his thumb after swiping it against Nicky’s skin. “Mmm. Sweet,” he observes, likely having found a stray morsel of powdered sugar. “Strudel?”

“Of course,” he agrees, sinking back into Joe’s arms as he stirs the food in the pan.

When they were younger, freshly together, such a position would be dangerous. There had been whole decades when they couldn’t be trusted to curl so close together, not if they wanted to see dinner finished. They’ve grown, though, and learned. Now, Joe can touch him like this, Nicky can be held, and dinner will still be served.

Instead of falling victim to their baser urges, they sway together as Nicky cooks. The smells permeate the apartment and settle Nicky’s unease. He focuses on cooking, but every time he reaches for the cumin or pepper, his fingers brush the drug vials. Ignoring them, he picks up the pepper to heavily season the dish, knowing that it will make Nile’s eyes water and Andy dare Nicky to give her more. 

It is blissfully normal to think of eating dinner together and nothing else.

Dinner is not the easy affair he wants, though, as Nicky’s tensions keep running high. Nicky’s eyes keep sliding to the spice rack, to the point that Joe smacks his knee, earning a loud yelp right as everyone is beginning to clean their plates.

“Nicky?” Andy checks, giving him a wary look.

Nicky shoots Joe an accusatory look, because he doesn’t want to have to lie to Andy. It is a terrible position to be in, so he does what seems easiest. “I was just looking at all the dishes and thinking that it’s becoming a problem,” he says smoothly, which isn’t even a full lie. There are so many of them that they are beginning to pile up in the sink, something Nicky never likes.

“No worries,” Nile says easily, ever the mediator, “I’ll clean up. You cooked for us.”

“Thank you Nile,” Nicky says, as he gets his revenge by pinching Joe’s stomach and enjoying the way he flinches fully, smacking Nicky’s palm to try and get him off. 

Nile stares at them, gesturing between them with a fork. “...especially if it stops whatever this weird sex thing is.”

“It’s not a sex thing,” Joe and Nicky protest in tandem, but seeing as Joe has just shoved a hand down the back of Nicky’s pants to grab at his ass, it very well could become one soon.

“Right,” Nile echoes dubiously. 

Andy has nothing to say on the matter. Before they make it out of the room, Andy sets her glass of wine down and announces, “I’m going out for the night.” 

Given recent history, that means she won’t be back until early morning. 

“Be safe,” Nicky suggests.

Andy shoots him a glare that implies he might as well have told her to get fucked. Nile peers over, raising a brow as she silently asks if Joe and Nicky are going to go out, too. 

“I think we’ll stay in,” Joe responds smoothly, hand still on Nicky’s knee. “Have an early night.”

“Old men,” Nile scoffs under her breath. “Andy, you okay with some company?”

“Always,” Andy replies, which is a lie. If Nicky and Joe were to go out with her, she’d fuss and complain about not needing babysitters, but Nile is young and vivacious and not ‘boring’, as Andy has called them before. 

Nile brightens up and begins doing the dishes with much more gusto. Her eagerness continues as she hurries off to get changed, kissing Nicky on the cheek and messing with Joe’s hair as she grabs a purse and keys, following Andy out the door.

“Behave!” Joe shouts after her. 

“I should be telling you that!” is Nile’s final accusation before they leave, silence filling the safehouse as they go. 

Nicky gives Joe an amused look, lips curving up with delight. “So,” he says. “Early night?”

“That would be the sensible thing to do.”

Of course, sleep is not what either of them have in mind. Joe gets Nicky sprawled out on the bed, pinning his wrists to the mattress so he can climb on top of him, fucking himself on Nicky’s cock with a slow, langorous pace that has Nicky cursing in old Ligurian and Joe taking that as encouragement to squeeze tighter around him.

It’s better that Andy and Nile went out. This is not the kind of thing they need witnesses for, and they’ve already been shouted at because the walls aren’t soundproof.

(Admittedly, it’s still early by the time they both finish, still early after they clean up, and definitely still early, given that both Andy and Nile haven’t come home when they curl up in bed together)

“We should decide what to do with them before we tell Andy about the vials,” Joe says, stroking his crooked knuckles over Nicky’s forearm as he holds him, both of them post-coital and sweaty.

“What do you want to do?” Nicky asks, turning in Joe’s arms to face him. 

Joe exhales deeply, shaking his head. “I don’t know. What if you’re right? What if it’s just Andromache’s time?” He doesn’t sound like he likes that option, given the frustrated grunt that follows the words. “We can’t let her have it without it being tested. We can’t let this be the thing that kills her.”

“We can’t give it to anyone else,” Nicky says, aware they can’t risk anyone else’s life for this.

Joe hums in agreement, but says nothing.

The idea from earlier, such a small seedling that’s been growing, is still there in Nicky’s mind. He suspects that Joe has ideas of his own. Neither of them say anything about it. They don’t share their plans, though Nicky suspects Joe has something up his sleeve. He has that look in his eye that says so. 

Nicky is sure that if Joe looks too long, he’ll see a similar spark of an idea in his eyes, which is why he turns off the light and says nothing as he pulls Joe’s arms around his waist, curling back into the warmth of his body to get some rest before Andy and Nile inevitably return and wake them. 

Joe wakes first when the inevitable noise comes, leaning over Nicky to turn on the lamp, dousing the room in an irritating light. “What?” Nicky mumbles, exhausted and wondering if it’s morning. He squints through the light to find the travel clock on their nightstand. Four in the morning. Andy and Nile’s heels clattering on the ground. The two women laughing, though Andy is louder (because without her immortality, her system isn’t processing liquor as quickly).

Nicky groans and flops over to bury his face into the pillow.

Joe laughs softly, kissing Nicky’s shoulder before resting his chin on his back. “Maybe we are old men,” he sighs, burrowing into Nicky’s body a little harder. “I’m irritated they had fun. That’s a grumpy old man thing, right?”

Then Nicky must be the grumpiest, because he’s annoyed that Joe is still talking.

“Four in the morning,” Nicky sighs. “Please, my love. Sleep.” 

He’s definitely an old man, but if that means he gets to sleep, then he’s more than fine with it. Luckily, Nile seems aware of how early it is, because he hears her shushing Andy and telling her to keep it down. The noises diminish with the sound of the shower running and Nicky drifts off to sleep with the white noise and Joe’s arms around him lulling him to a steady state of calm.

When he wakes in the morning at a _proper_ time, he heads to the kitchen to make coffee, and the first thing he sees are the four vials in the spice rack.

Nicky tries to ignore them, but it’s impossible. 

He cooks and he sees them. He drinks his coffee and eats breakfast, and he thinks about them. He’s reading his book and every time he turns the page, he looks at them. If Andy takes them and something is wrong, then they’re signing her death warrant. 

If they want to offer them up as a solution to Andy, they need to be tested.

Never keen to be a lab rat, Nicky balks at the idea of putting it to the test, but it’s for Andy. 

It’s different this time.

Besides, this isn’t the same as Merrick. If he’s hurt or he dies, he’ll heal and will still be free. No doctor or lab worker will know what he’s done. If it’s non-lethal, then they can have Andy test it, and work from there -- if she wants it, of course. Nicky knows that ever since they discovered Quynh is still out there, Andy has been seeking a way back to her immortality and trying not to let them know. 

Besides, he keeps going back to his initial thought: 

Who better to understand the side effects than his own mind? Who will he trust more, and who is he willing to risk? The answer to all these questions is _himself_.

It’s why he takes a vial from the spice rack, then heads to the washroom to dig for syringes under the counter. They’re a new purchase since Andy became mortal, but incredibly handy right now. 

Loading the syringe is an easy task for someone like him, who’s performed this task so many times before. He closes his eyes as he injects it into the meat of his shoulder, watching his body heal the pin prick wound within seconds. 

Then, he waits.

There isn't an immediate reaction. He does not start frothing at the mouth, there is no gripping and agonizing pain that rushes through him. Whatever the scientists have developed, it doesn’t seem to have any immediate effect. 

“Good,” he says, speaking to his reflection as he nods. 

He’s still not sure what this means in the long run or if it will even work, but he’s glad not to have died on the bathroom floor. He’s not sure he would have lived that down. He wraps up the syringe and disposes of it at the bottom of the trash can, leaving the washroom to join the others and monitor his symptoms.

When he returns to the kitchen, though, there are only two vials in the spice rack, which means that one has suddenly gone missing. 

There is a flash of panic that washes over Nicky, his heart rate kicking into high gear as a flush overwhelms him. He hurries to check on Andy, but she’s asleep on her bed, wrapped around her knitting and snoring. He grips the doorway and propels himself to the next bedroom, but Nile is on her laptop, with headphones on, and no syringe or vial in sight.

Nile pushes the headphones off an inch, waving at him warily. “Everything okay?” she asks. He nods even though it’s not, but he’s already moving, with one more room to check and one more place for the vial to be. 

That only leaves…

“Joe,” he exhales, finding him in the bedroom, injecting himself with a loaded syringe, the empty vial on the bedspread. “What are you doing? Do you have any idea what this could do? It might kill you!” 

“Which is why I need to test it, for Andy,” Joe agrees. 

“And if it hurts you? If it kills you?”

“There were three vials, and I wanted to protect you from having to do this,” Joe insists, the furrow in his brow he always gets when he’s being stubborn suddenly appearing. 

Unfortunately, Nicky also sees the moment that the furrow turns into something else. It shifts into a narrowing of his eyes, which Nicky thinks is the moment he figured out that the game is up. Nicky suspects that it’s because he’s not doing a very good job hiding his guilt.

“Nicky,” Joe says calmly. “How many vials did Copley bring back?”

“Four vials, Joe.”

“And what happened to the fourth?”

“I took it, to test for Andy and to keep _you_ safe.” 

Joe groans, almost like he’s not surprised. It’s swiftly followed by a disbelieving laugh, one that Nicky echoes. It figures that they’re both so eager to protect one another that they both took an untested drug. Nicky should have known that something like this would happen, but at least now they have double the test subjects. 

“So, now?” Joe sighs.

“We wait to see if one of us suffers or dies,” Nicky supposes. His eyes flick over Joe, wanting to shout at him some more, but it would be very hypocritical given that he’d done the exact same thing. He cannot help laughing ruefully, pressing his forehead to Joe’s as he pulls him in for a kiss. “You stubborn, ridiculous, romantic man, trying to protect me.”

“And look how that’s gone, with you trying to do the same,” Joe replies fondly. “At least we know that whatever happens, we’ll do it together.” 

That’s been the way of it for over nine centuries. 

“You are stubborn and shortsighted and I love you,” Joe says, cupping Nicky’s face with his palms. 

Nicky snorts. “And you are hot headed and determined and too loyal for your own good.” His lips curve up with a grin. “I love you too.”

So they are at an impasse. They love one another and they are both stupid and protective.

Hopefully, whatever happens next will not involve too much suffering for their noble actions.

* * *

One hour later, nothing has happened. 

“Feeling anything odd?” Joe checks.

Nicky shakes his head, dropping Joe’s wrist once he’s checked his pulse and his temperature. They haven’t started convulsing, so if the vial was poisonous, it’s not something that acts with any immediacy. One hour means they can rule out some of the shorter term concerns. 

“No side effects,” he says, feeling optimistic as he pens down their vitals in a small leather-bound notebook. 

Six hours later, Joe is pressed up against Nicky’s side while they watch a movie. Neither of them are paying any attention to it, between their constant surveillance of their symptoms and the way Joe is absently rubbing circles against Nicky’s stomach, slipping under his shirt. 

“Still nothing,” Joe confirms.

“Nothing,” Nicky agrees, starting to feel relieved and _hopeful_. “Are we going to talk about the fact that you secretly injected yourself with this?”

“Are we going to talk about how you did the same?” Joe mimics Nicky’s tone _exactly_ , even if he does add a touch of mocking to it.

Fair point. It would be hypocritical for either of them to be mad at each other. 

Besides, they’ve already gone over this. They’re both stupid and they’re both sorry and they’re both going to end up making it up to the other. It’s silly to bicker about it and immature, at that, though Nicky finds himself fighting the urge as the hours pass. 

Twelve hours pass with no side effects, and then eighteen. Nile doesn’t make comments that anything seems strange about them at dinner, which adds to Nicky’s optimism that the drugs might not have _any_ side effects and be safe for Andy to try.

Finally, twenty-four hours pass. 

Joe and Nicky are still alive, they have all their limbs, and they haven’t grown anything new. There are no struggles to breathe, no strange spots, and nothing has grown in that shouldn’t be there. If something was going to happen, Nicky thinks it must have by now, especially with their healing abilities.

There’s no telling if it will give Andy back her immortality, but it also doesn’t look like it will kill her. It’s time for them to reveal what they’ve been working on to Andy. 

“You want to tell her?” Joe offers, even though Nicky has other plans in mind. 

They’ve only just woken up, after all, and Joe looks extremely fetching with his bed head and wearing one of Nicky’s t-shirts to bed. He hooks his fingers into the fabric of the shirt to pull Joe towards him for a messy morning kiss, grinning like an idiot as Joe straddles him.

Joe’s knowing grin is easily the most beautiful thing in the world. “Oh,” he says, pinning Nicky’s shoulders to the bed, “I see what you want to do.”

“We will tell her after,” Nicky protests, not wanting Joe to think him so single-minded, “We’ve already spent twenty-four hours waiting, it can rest a little longer.”

An hour later, Nicky has healed at least a half a dozen hickeys, Joe has given him a blowjob so good that he momentarily forgot how to speak English, and they’d managed to have a very touching, very needed post-coital moment where they reminded each other that they ought to just talk about these things.

“I just don’t see why we couldn’t have done this together,” is Nicky’s opinion on the matter.

“Why should both of us become lab rats when just the one will do?” Joe put it.

Nicky, privately, thinks that they would have wound up fighting over who would be the lab rat, so maybe it’s best they went behind each other’s backs for this. There’s less squabbling and they wound up doing it together anyway. 

“Are we stalling?” he asks Joe, still content in his arms.

The lack of response is a clear ‘yes’, which means Nicky should be responsible. He groans and burrows his face in the pillow, not _wanting_ to be the responsible one for once, but he will. He knows he will, even though Andy is probably going to end up yelling at them. He sighs, heavily, and sits up, dislodging Joe in the process.

It gets him a whining little noise, which Nicky probably deserves, but if they’re going to talk to her, then they’re probably going to need pants.

Joe’s on the same page, handing him a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. He tugs on an overly-large sweater and a pair of jeans, hopping into them as he hops right past Nicky, pressing a kiss to the top of his head in the process.

“Come on,” Joe encourages, holding a hand out to him. “What’s the worst she can do? Kill us?”

“Yes.” Not only could she kill them, she could wait for them to resuscitate and do it again. 

Besides, it’s not the killing that he fears, it’s the creativity she might take in the method she chooses. He really doesn’t want to relive what happened during the 16th century when she had chopped off one of his hands and he’d bled to death, all to make a point of why he shouldn’t thieve without consulting her first. “Be brave and strong, my love,” Joe whispers, and pinches Nicky’s ass to get him moving with a yelp.

He does, but only because the sooner they get this over with, the better. They can retreat back to the safety of the bedroom once they’ve confessed.

Andy and Nile are in the main room, sitting at the table and reading newspapers. Andy even seems to be in a good enough mood, which means she hasn’t been reading the op-eds. _Good_ , thinks Nicky, who needs every bit of luck they can get. 

“Andy, don’t be mad.”

Nicky knows that it’s probably not the smartest idea in the world to start speaking like that. Given the way her eyes instantly narrow as she sights him, Nicky suspects that she’s instantly been made mad, contrary to what he’d been hoping. “You’d better finish that thought, Nicky, and be glad that I’m not armed.” 

Nicky takes in a deep breath and tries to will himself to speak. It takes closing his eyes and _not_ looking at Andy to coax him onwards.

“We’ve been working with Copley to find something for you. Ever since London, five years ago, it’s been something that we work on little by little.” 

He feels Joe’s presence at his side, opening his eyes to look towards the spice rack, gaze catching on the remaining two vials. It’s enough to take Andy’s glare off of Nicky, turned to the vials in question, her eyes widening as she finally sees what’s been hiding in plain sight. 

“We think they figured it out, boss. We think we might have a fix for your mortality situation,” Joe says, full of encouragement and hope.

“What happened to, ‘it’s time’?” Andy asks Nicky pointedly.

“That was before we knew that Quynh is still alive and needs more help than we think we can give.” 

Andy squints at him, but he can tell by the way her lips curve up, just slightly, that she’s grateful that they’ve been looking. 

“Ignoring,” she starts sharply, “the fact that the three of you went behind my back for something I didn’t ask for, how the hell do you know this is safe and that you didn’t just put a giant target on our backs for nothing?” 

Nile’s already shrinking in the wave of Andy’s disapproval, but both Joe and Nicky have weathered this and worse. This is mild, as far as Andy is concerned. It’s why Nicky feels so optimistic that she’s willing to try it. Then again, he also suspects that she’d been willing the moment they mentioned Quynh’s name. 

“We tested it.”

“How?” she demands bluntly.

“Joe and I both took doses,” Nicky says, hoping that the look on his face and the tone of his voice makes it clear that he will not be accepting any comments about the fact that they both took it. If Andy has questions, she had better save them for later when Nicky is happy to rant about how selfless and stubborn and perfectly frustrating Joe is in private. 

Given the way Andy has fixed her eye on him, Nicky imagines that isn’t a ‘might happen’ but something that absolutely will, probably when there’s a bottle of wine to split. 

Finally, she gives up the ghost or decides to have mercy on them. Whatever her reason is, Nicky is grateful she’s not going to drag that argument out. “You’re both still fine?” They nod, in tandem. “No poisonous or allergic reactions, no deaths, no choking, nothing wrong?”

“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” Joe confirms. “Whatever the scientists came up with, boss, it’s either a placebo and it’ll do nothing or maybe it gets you the immortality back.”

“Good enough.”

That’s all Andy says before she shoots the vial back, one pinky in the air as she tips the tube up and drinks it, straight. 

“Whoa, hey, Andy…”

“I would have used a syringe, it’s…”

She glares at them, which shuts them both up. She taps the vial back a few more times, the last of the droplets gone. Then, the vial clatters onto the counter and there’s only one left. “Do you want me to try slicing my hand open now?” she asks, already reaching for a knife.

“Whoa!” Nile interrupts. “Hey! Can we not go crazy here?” She grabs the knife out of Andy’s hands, muttering ‘unbelievable’ under her breath. “Andy, give me your index finger.” She nods again when Andy hesitates, but finally gives it over.

Shaking her head, Nile flips the knife and pricks the tip of Andy’s finger with great care. The blood wells up and sits there. It’s not running off or getting worse, but it’s also not getting better. 

“You’re never going to be able to tell if I’m healing with a poke that small. Come on. Cut my arm,” Andy encourages. “Nothing big,” she says, when Nile looks like she wants to yell at her some more. “Two inch shallow cut. Actually, you know what, Nicky,” she orders, gesturing for Nile to give him the knife. “Small incision, like you’re doing laparoscopic surgery.”

It’s been years since he’s had to do that. 

Still, why bother with the drug at all if they’re not going to find anything out? He takes the knife from Nile and uses his right hand to steady Andy by holding gently onto her wrist, not wanting to hurt her. Carefully, he makes his incision. 

It’s not very deep, because he doesn’t want it to bleed. His intent is only to see it heal.

Stepping back, he wipes the knife off on his hoodie, setting it on the counter as he turns his hawkish stare to Andy’s forearm, along with Nile and Joe. The three of them are bent over her arm as if they’re expecting something to grow out of it. Seconds pass, but the wound doesn’t heal. 

That’s fine. Their wounds heal more slowly when their immortality is new, right?

_Minutes_ pass, and it’s becoming harder to convince his mind that it’s going to happen. The cut remains, not stitching itself together. Whatever had been in those vials, it clearly hadn’t given Andy back her immortality.

Nicky sees Joe’s face fall, crushed by the news. Andy must see it too, because she grabs him by the shoulder, giving him a light shake. “Hey,” she says, voice low. “We knew it was a long shot and it’s okay if I’m mortal because I’m okay with it being my time,” she insists. “Tell me you hear me, Joe.”

He nods, but Nicky can tell he’s deflated. He abandons Andy’s arm so he can wrap his arms around Joe’s waist, burying his face in his neck as he murmurs to him in Italian, promising that they’re not going to give up. They’ll figure something else out.

“Why the hell are you all acting like I just died?” Andy complains. She’s right. The air has a gloomy air to it, which isn’t right given that nothing is actually wrong. “Look, you took a longshot and you missed. That’s not a bad thing. Hey,” she points out. “You didn’t kill me, that’s something, right?”

It is, but it’s not helping Nicky’s mood.

He focuses his attention on the good news. She’s right. She’s not dead, she’s not dying, and if it is her time, it’s not today. There’s nothing that’s going to kill her in their Vienna apartment, other than maybe boredom as she so often complains. 

“Andy’s right,” Joe finally speaks. “We tried, right?” He shares a bright smile with Nicky devoid of any regret, which begins to unfurl the knot in Nicky’s stomach. 

They did try. So what if they failed? 

“Sorry for going behind your back, Andy,” Nicky says. “We should have asked if this is something you wanted before we started looking into it.”

“That’s what I said,” Nile mutters under her breath.

“And you were right,” Joe agrees. “We mean it, we’re sorry.”

“No harm done,” Andy promises, pulling Nicky and then Joe into a hug, as if to prove that she’s okay with their deceit. She kisses Nicky’s temple, then squeezes Joe tightly at the back until he groans from the pressure and laughs. “Now, I don’t know about the two of you, but I still have a lingering hangover from Nile insisting on so many schnapps last night, I could use some schnitzel, beer, and ribs. What do you say?”

Nicky gives Joe a hopeful look, thinking that it would be nice to go out and forget about _all_ of this. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Joe speaks for the both of them. “Let’s go see what Vienna can do about your hangover.”

Just like that, their plan to help get Andy her immortality back goes up in smoke. No one is hurt, no one is angry, and the air is clear. 

Nicky is relieved for that much. After all, it could have gone _so_ much worse. 

It feels like they’ve managed to get off lightly and without any long-term damage, which is a relief. Even if they’d gone behind Andy’s back, it’s not going to cause any trouble because the drug had done nothing, so what harm could it possibly cause?


	2. Chapter 2

Nicky wakes with an aching feeling in his legs. 

Squirming, he tries to dislodge it, but nothing is working. The moving around highlights a _second_ issue when he drags his hips against the sheets and realizes that he’s harder than he’s ever been in the lifetimes he can remember. True, mornings with Joe always leaves him in a mood where he’s eager to pin his husband to the bed, but that is a low burning thing, a simmering lust that he’s grown used to. What he feels now is like a wildfire in his soul, something that cannot be quenched. Grimacing, he lifts his head from the pillow, but a lock of hair is pressed in his vision. Sleepily, Nicky tries to shove it away, and ends up smacking himself in the face. 

“ _Che cazzo_ ,” he mumbles, dragging his hips against the bed before remembering that he doesn’t have to. “Joe,” he pleads, and reaches for him. 

He honestly can’t remember ever feeling this desperate and needy in the morning, but he burns with it. 

Joe groans sleepily, burying his face in Nicky’s neck, holding onto him with a vice-grip, unwilling to let him go. It’s not exactly helping, given that Nicky desperately needs to do something about his problem. He manages to get on his belly, but Joe rolls with him, suddenly on top of him in a way that makes Nicky realize…

He’s _definitely_ not the only one with a problem.

“Joe,” Nicky protests, voice muffled by the pillows. “You’re crushing me.”

“M’not moving,” Joe protests, and wraps his arms tighter around Nicky’s waist, hanging onto him like a limpet as he tries his very best to absorb his body into Nicky’s so that the two of them can become one.

It is both very sexy and very annoying, because Joe’s body is practically a furnace and he’s dripping sweat. Drastic measures are required. Nicky reaches back, twisting his elbow to pinch Joe’s hip, which gets a yelp and Joe slides off his body. 

Nicky is free, able to sit up and drag the sheets with him. He scrubs his fingers through his hair, frowning at the length of it. He’d had it cut a few weeks ago, there’s no way that it should be this long again.

There’s also the matter of Joe gaping at him to contend with, eyes wide with horror and awe and a little bit of admiration, he thinks.

If ever Nicky has felt like something ethereal and otherworldly, it is now, when he is being gazed upon like he is an angel from the Old Testament. “What?” he mumbles, shoving his hair out of his face ( _again_ ). There is something wrong with Joe, though. There is a softness to his face beneath the beard that Nicky doesn’t think he has ever seen. 

“Nicky.”

Oh, god in heaven, why did Joe’s voice just crack?

The light in the room isn’t the best since their sole window is a small thing that faces an alley. Nicky fumbles to turn on the lamp and get a better look at Joe. Smacking his palm over his face to scrub at his eyes, he stares at him again.

With the new light, there’s no missing it.

There’s a leanness to Joe’s body, a lack of musculature, along with that softness in his face. He still has his beard, but there’s a roundness around his jaw that hadn’t been there before. It’s not that Joe had many wrinkles, but they’re all smoothed out, and if Nicky didn’t know any better, he’d say there’s a smattering of acne dappling Joe’s forehead and cheeks. It is, Nicky supposes, the first time he has ever seen him, in a sense. They’d met as adults, but now they are something else. Nicky feels an overwhelming wave of fondness and adoration for this man before him. 

Or, maybe, not a man at all. 

It is a tender thing, to be able to see your soulmate for the very first time again. It’s also a very panic-inducing thing to realize that he’s staring at what looks to be a teenaged version of Joe, and given all the evidence, Nicky isn’t in a much better state.

Nicky is both ashamed and proud of the stream of frantic Italian cursing that slips past his mouth, which only grows in panic when that doesn’t end up being his biggest problem. That _still_ belongs to his hard-on. 

“I think those vials did something,” Joe states the obvious.

Nicky doesn’t need to say ‘of fucking course they did’ when the tilt of his head and his fierce gaze does it for him. “I’m going to do something to you,” he warns, crawling towards Joe so he can do something about their distinctive morning problems. He gets his hand on Joe’s cock, raising a brow. “Unless you want to keep talking?”

“Fuck no,” Joe vows. “Let’s be fuckups later and fuck bunnies now.”

It’s a crude way to put it, but one that Nicky is very invested in helping to make happen. 

“You always have the smartest ideas,” Nicky breathes out reverently, because while his body might suddenly have shunted back to being a teenager, his mind is still that of his adult self, which means he loves and respects his husband and his _wonderful_ ideas. “Now. Fuck me.”

Joe’s grin is bright and predatory as he flips with a speed Nicky hasn’t seen him display before, crawling up the bed towards him.

“With pleasure.”

* * *

“Joe - there, please…”

“Fuck, I’m trying. Just don’t move your…”

“Ow!”

“It’s not my fault your elbow is bonier now!”

“Stop complaining about my elbows and _fuck me_.”

“I’ll give you something to complain about. Don’t move, just, there! Nicky, fuck, stay right there, don’t you move, don’t you dare, don’t you… _oh_. Fuck, Nicky.”

“You’re so good to me, Joe, you’re so _good_.”

“Damn right I am. Nicky, fuck, just...let me stay here, don’t move, let me rest.”

“....Round three?”

“Fuck yes.”

* * *

“Shit, Nicky, did you get a new tongue, too?”

Joe yelps, dragging his nails over the bedsheets, grinding back against Nicky’s mouth as he rims Joe with the enthusiasm of a man dedicated to exploring the changes in Joe’s ass (which is incredible, so firm and high and tight). Nicky yanks him back with his hands on his hips, dragging him back down the bed when he squirms just a little too far out of reach.

Joe sobs with pleasure, smacking his palm against the sheets. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t…”

Nicky doesn’t.

* * *

They go five rounds.

They go _five rounds_ in barely ninety minutes. Nicky is breathless, gaping at the ceiling, still trying to process what just happened. Their healing abilities have given them good refractory periods, but being young and immortal is apparently something neither of them could have ever expected.

Nicky’s hair is a mess on Joe’s stomach, smears of Joe’s come on his cheek from a blowjob that ended quicker than Joe normally does. 

“I can’t believe we did that,” Joe groans, shifting as he reaches down, using a stray t-shirt to wipe the mess off Nicky’s face. “I can’t believe we did so _much_ of that.” 

Nicky mumbles something that he really wants to be words. He’s not even sure which language he’s attempting. It all comes out as mostly a babble, but he manages one clear word in English: “Sleep,” he whines, because he’s tired. He’s more tired than he’s ever been, like his body has been running marathons and is now trying to heal.

Maybe it’s just trying to grow, which is an alarming thought considering his body hasn’t done that in centuries. 

Whatever is motivating him, Nicky drags Joe towards him and very immaturely decides that there’s not going to be anyone attempting to be responsible and tell the others about what happened, not right now. 

After what they just did, it’ll be a miracle if they’re coherent by next _week_.

* * *

Their restful sleep doesn’t last very long, no matter how much Nicky had hoped for it. Reality and responsibility creep back in once the wild mood from five rounds of frantic sex wears off. Nicky bolts up as if he’s been electrocuted, the implications of what’s happened to them striking like a bad nightmare. 

It looks like Joe’s had a similar revelation. He’s a mess, but the horror on his face overshadows his sex-mussed hair and generally debauched state.

“Andy,” they echo together, scrambling to push up from bed in an effort to find clothes and then search for their fearless leader. Nicky hops into a pair of pants that are a few inches too long, making him wonder how late it was that his last growth spurt hit. 

If this has happened to the both of them, then Andy isn’t safe either. Given how much of the serum she’d drank, it could be any minute now. Joe hisses, stubbing his toe on the bed, cursing loudly as he dashes back and forth in the room, digging around for something to wear. Nicky, meanwhile, yanks his hoodie on, hair a disheveled mess as he tugs it down, noticing how it sags on him, like it’s a size too big. 

It’s time for them to face the music. They don’t even get a chance to sneak in, because the bedroom door creaks as Nicky opens it, giving Nile and Andy fair warning that they’re coming.

“Thank fucking god,” Nile calls over to them without looking up from her book. “What prompted the fuckfest?”

“You really want to know that?” Andy asks ruefully. 

Nicky tugs on the sleeves of his hoodie, though he doesn’t need to. He’s a few inches shorter than he used to be, which means the sleeves are already covering all but the tips of his fingers. It’s how he’s channelling his anxiety as he steps forward into the room, grip going tighter as he lands his gaze on Andy to see if she’s still _her_. 

He clears his throat to get their attention and, once he has it, decides to _try_ for something calm and level-headed. 

“Everyone,” he starts, holding his hands out (between brushing away lanky strands of hair from off his acne-spotted forehead) like he’s trying to diffuse the situation, “don’t panic.” 

“Andy,” Nile mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Why does Nicky look like a pubescent teenaged fuckboy in training?”

“I don’t know half of those words, Nile.”

“It’s probably because he is one,” Joe pipes up from Nicky’s side. “We both are. It looks like the serum didn’t exactly give your immortality back, but it does do a number on you when it comes to your youth.” He reaches over to adjust Nicky’s hoodie, kissing his cheek. “Also, he’s not a fuckboy, he’s still my everything and more.”

“...well,” Nile says, voice small, “I guess I know what prompted the fuckathon.”

“Fuckboy,” Andy is still muttering under her breath. 

The shock cedes to something else, at least for Nile, who shoves her book down on the nearby table so she can storm their way, a mission clearly in mind. “Are you still healing?” Nile demands. 

_Shit_. Nicky catches Joe’s eye, panicked that he hadn’t even considered it. Then again, given how they’d woken up and the fact that his brain is _still_ telling him to screw this, and fuck Joe, he’s not surprised he isn’t working on logic and sense right now. His relief is instant, though, because he knows he can answer honestly.

“We are,” Nicky vows.

Joe gives him a confused look. “What? How do you know?” He’s already reaching for the knife they’d used just yesterday to test Andy’s immortality.

Nicky coughs awkwardly, trying to scratch his neck and his cheek in a very subtle way, eyes flicking towards his thighs. “We already have evidence,” he reminds Joe, trying very hard not to say ‘if we’d stopped healing, my thighs would look like you’d scrubbed sandpaper over them and my neck would look like I’m a vampire’s training meal’. 

Joe, luckily, figures it out quickly.

“Yes, we’re healing,” he vows, and seeing as Joe’s chest doesn’t look like he’s had leeches attached to him, Nicky thinks it probably should have occurred to them both sooner. 

Unfortunately, Nile _also_ understands their logic about two seconds later. “I hate all of this already,” she grumbles, turning towards Andy. “At least their minds are still their own. For now, at least,” she says. “I guess you’re next. How long between you taking the vials and Andy drinking one?”

“Twenty four hours,” Nicky sums up, give or take.

“And how long were you two boning?” Nile continues, almost sweetly.

“Since we woke up, so maybe two hours ago?” Joe sounds very proud of that. Nicky thinks maybe his mind might be a little immature, because he feels a frisson of pride and delight too, and thinks, _five rounds_ again. 

They look at Andy, all thinking the same thing even if no one wants to admit it out loud. 

They’ve got just under a day until Andy succumbs to the same fate, though Nicky thinks that she might be slightly more mature about it, if only because she won’t have a warm body ready and willing to do anything she wants. Though, it’s Andy. He’s known her long enough to know that an absence of a companion is not a barrier. 

She has the charm, the skill, and the determination to get what she wants.

“I guess we wait,” Joe admits. “Now, let’s start with talking about why if anyone is a fuckboy out of the two of us, it’s unfortunately closer to me…”

Seeing as Nicky has no idea what Joe is talking about and he needs to calm his body down (how can it already be aroused staring at Joe, the way he winks, the way his sweatpants hug his ass, the way he…), he grabs a pillow and hugs it tightly, brushing floppy strands of hair out of his face as he settles in to listen.

The whole time, he doesn’t take his eyes off Andy. 

They’re the ones who led her into this mess. He knows that means he should be the one responsible for helping her out of it, but Nicky and Joe have their own problems. Hopefully, Nile is ready to take up the mantle of maturity, because Nicky swears he can feel his slipping away with every additional moment he watches Joe speaking with his hands.

* * *

If it were up to Nicky, Andy would have been under complete surveillance from that moment forward. Andy being Andy, she had said that she’s not an exhibit at the zoo and they could fuck off. She’d promised to let them know when it happened and if she’s healing or not before locking herself in her bedroom, saying that she intended to get some sleep while she could. 

In the meantime, there are solutions to find.

“I can’t believe I’m the designated adult,” Nile mumbles, gaping at them as she paces, almost like she’s working up to a lecture. “You two are…” She gestures, frantically, and then glances to the door where Andy is slamming _something_ around, given the odd sounds.

Nicky reaches across the couch to thread his hand with Joe’s, still growing used to his new gangly body. His limbs are long and he hasn’t filled out. Was he like this in the 1080s? Honestly, he can’t even remember his actual teenage years, so he isn’t sure if this is what he’d been like, but his body seems determined to be a beanpole and his hair keeps getting in his eyes. 

“We will behave,” Nicky insists, grateful that he has retained his memories and his mind.

He suspects his mind is not entirely his own, of course, seeing as he keeps finding himself overrun with impulses and desires that he would normally have no problem with. His promise seems to fly out the window when Joe looks at him. His handsome Joe, who still has a full beard at seventeen, who moves with more grace than is deserved for a teenager, and who is currently staring at Nicky in a way that makes him blush. 

“Besides, it’s not permanent. There’s an antidote,” he reminds Nile. “I texted Copley. He’ll pick it up and bring it to us. Then, no more walks down memory lane.”

Nile seems relieved by that, though there’s a curious look on her face. “Do you or Joe even _remember_ being this young?” 

Honestly? “No,” Nicky scoffs, shaking his head. He looks beside him to where Joe is sketching, his lanky fingers cradling a piece of charcoal, his attention fixed on his sketchpad. He’s been sketching Nicky in his seventeen-year-old glory (or, at least, that’s their best estimation given that Joe has a vague memory that his beard hadn’t come in until after he was sixteen). “I know that I had an older brother and sister,” he admits. “It’s why I could become a priest. There were already grandchildren.”

“Hold still, Nicky,” Joe criticizes.

It takes Nicky a minute to realize he’s been bouncing his leg constantly, almost like he can’t stop the motion. He forces himself to stop, wanting Joe to have a picture of him now (even though Nile has already taken at least a hundred pictures with her phone). 

“What’s it feel like?” 

He feels like he wants to burst out of his skin. He feels like he’s too big inside, his desires too overwhelming. He feels like if he doesn’t touch Joe, he’ll explode. He thinks if he is touched, he’ll instantly tent his trousers, and he doesn’t like that part, because it feels like he’s completely out of control. He’s impatient, he’s short-tempered, he’s needy, and he’s young.

Nicky isn’t sure he likes it at all.

“It feels like I’ve got butterflies in my stomach and I have a crush for the very first time,” Joe speaks up in the absence of sound. 

It only figures that while Nicky is focused on how angry and out of control he feels, Joe is thinking about how passionately in love he is. It says something about the kind of men they are, and he’s not surprised that Joe had been the one to broker peace all those years ago, if this is what his emotional drive had been like as a teenager.

“Even if my love is a lanky string bean now,” Joe teases, “my heart only beats for him.” 

He tries to let Joe’s kindness wash over the bristling anger that lives in him, soothing that too-sharp, too-big, too-everything burst of emotions that desperately wants to come out. He is so lucky that his beloved had been patient and kind through his teenage years, when Nicky had been brash and abrasive -- a problem for the church to solve.

“It feels wrong, to be so young,” Nicky speaks. “I don’t feel like myself,” he says, trying not to be _angry_ about that fact. 

Joe stands as he’s speaking, as Nicky balls up his hands into fists, like he’s searching for something to take his anger out on -- though he knows there is nothing in sight. He did this to himself, there’s only his own actions to blame. 

“I’m angry and torn up and twisted and I know this is who I was. I know, because I grew into the kind of man who went on a crusade,” he says vindictively, working himself up and knowing this is only going to spiral.

Or, at least, it would, if not for Joe cupping Nicky’s chin and cheek, kissing the top of his head to soothe the teenaged beast inside. Nicky melts back into it, craving touch more than he does as an adult, even going so far as to let out a soft whining little noise. Joe sinks down on the sofa with Nicky, his drawings abandoned. 

His love looks so young, but there is no mistaking the wisdom in his eyes.

“We were all seventeen once, and stupid. For me, I was fourteen and stupid when I felt such things, but I had my father guide me to be a better man.” He laughs, softly. “Nile,” he calls over to her, drawing her back into the conversation. “Would you believe he did it so I could be a better husband?”

“I don’t know if Nicky is what they had in mind for the kind of person you’d marry,” she quips, sounding relieved that they’re not talking about Nicky’s shortcomings anymore.

“Maybe not, but they’d be wrong to think he’s anything but perfect.” 

“That’s sweet,” Nile praises. “You’re both still idiots for taking the serum together, but at least you’re kind of sweet.” 

Joe nuzzles Nicky’s neck, and the physical symptom of being so young shows itself again in the way it prickles and burns, his skin softer than it is as an adult, subjected to the rough bristle of Joe’s beard. Though it’s not as thick as normal, it’s still very present. 

It’s a lucky thing he heals, or he’d forever be a spotted thing.

“You heard Nicky. Copley gets us the antidote, we fix ourselves. We just have to make sure we keep an eye on Andy.”

So far, so good. While there’s still the sound of Andy thumping around and pacing, that’s also not too unusual. She does that normally when she’s frustrated and with her typical coping mechanisms out of reach (mortal livers don’t take well to full bottles of vodka downed within ten minutes), smashing is the next best thing.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted,” Joe protests. “I’m taking Andy’s advice, sleeping while I can. Nicolo?”

Nicky hums an agreement, even though he’s barely paying attention. His gaze is fixed on the door, hearing Nile say that Joe is only this tired because he decided to have a sex marathon this morning, and Nicky manages to sound some kind of agreement, though he’s not sure what he just said yes to.

Given the way Nile and Joe are both staring at him, it’s probably not good.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just didn’t know that’s what you’re into,” Nile says, heading to the kitchen to grab her phone and some money. “I’m going out to see if I can grab some more supplies.”

Joe opens his mouth, but Nile shoots him a cutting look.

“Not. Those. Supplies.”

“Right,” Joe says, closing his mouth. “We’ll make do.” 

“Behave,” she warns again, heading out. 

Joe waits until Nile’s gone to wriggle down Nicky’s body, grabbing a blanket and pulling Nicky down with him. “One of us should keep watch,” Nicky protests, his gaze still fixed on Andy’s door, worrying about all the possibilities of what could go wrong behind it. How young will Andy get? What happens if the dose she took is too much and she’s younger than them? What if you need to be immortal for it to work?

“ _Ya amar_ , we know it will be hours before it kicks in. Sleep,” Joe beckons. “I promise that you’ll wish, later, that you had if you don’t.”

Joe’s right.

It’s very annoying that he’s right.

Nicky sulks mildly, even as he lies down, letting Joe bundle him into his arms. “How is it that I know you’re experiencing the same thing as I am,” he bitches, “and yet, you are still so mature.” Given the way Joe is smugly preening, Nicky suspects that it’s very much on purpose so Joe can one-up him and pretend that he’s the mature and responsible one.

They’re both physically and emotionally seventeen -- Nicky sees right through him. 

Still, he’s also bundled carefully and protectively in Joe’s arms, and it’s like having a weighted blanket sending him off to sleep. He doesn’t even realize when he drifts off, a sign that his body is fighting against him, because normally he controls how and when he falls asleep.

Not so, at least, not now. 

He wakes to the sound of crashing and thumping in Andy’s room, followed by eerie silence.

Grimacing, he rubs his eyes, trying to acclimate himself. He hasn’t been moved from the couch where he’d fallen asleep in Joe’s arms, which is probably a good thing. Nile is back from the store, which means that he can resist the impulse to drag his hips along Joe’s body to try and rut away the need, but only barely. 

Witnesses are, at least, enough to make his shame kick in, even now. The sound wakes Joe as well, startling like the adorable sleepy creature he always is, burrowing into Nicky’s side even as Nicky sits up, causing Joe to have to climb after him for his cuddles. 

“Not a good sign,” Nile mutters, reaching for her pistol. 

“What, you think someone kidnapped her?” Joe scoffs.

“I am not taking my chances with that woman,” Nile replies, creeping forward. “You might have kept your memories, but she hasn’t been a teenager since before the invention of the _wheel_ , who the hell knows what’s going to happen?” 

Nicky thinks she’s being a little dramatic, but he’s not exactly in a position to throw stones. He is, after all, in a glass house of young emotion, and earlier today when Joe had told him they’d run out of lube, he’d dramatically flopped onto the bed and lamented that he might as well die, then.

Nicky knocks on the door. “Andy?” 

There’s no sound but the rustling of the wind, which is a bad sign. Joe sighs and opens the door, and while it’s a relief to see it’s not locked, what they find is bad news. 

The window to the alley is open, the curtain is billowing, and there’s a note pinned to the desk with a knife. 

“Why does she always do this to my furniture?” Joe whines, yanking the knife up and prying the piece of paper with it to give it a cursory read. Given his expression, Nicky doesn’t need the confirmation to know that their fears have come to pass. “She’s young. She doesn’t even want to attempt to guess her age, she’s just put…”

He trails off, scowling.

“What?” Nicky prods. “What does she say?”

“That because her tits haven’t diminished to bee stings, she thinks she must be at least sixteen. Classy,” Joe sarcastically scoffs. Nicky gives him a pointed look, seeing as he’d done something similar after they’d been through round two, trying to determine if either of them still had _growing_ to do. “Shut up,” Joe hisses, cheeks flush behind his beard. “What do we do?”

“We have to go after her,” Nile says. 

“She’d just run again.” Nicky isn’t so sure he wants to spook her. “What do you do with a petulant teenager?” he wonders. At least he and Joe have stayed put, though they have each other, and other _pressing_ priorities. 

“I don’t know!”

Nicky gives her a pointed look. “You were the one of us most recently one.”

“Yeah,” Nile quips. “Not really, unless you two haven’t looked in the mirror lately.”

“We’re still adults!” whines Nicky.

Okay, fine. Point taken.

“Look, I say we try and call her, then let her come back to us,” Nile suggests, glancing between Nicky and Joe. “I’d ask for a consensus, but I’m in charge because I’m the oldest, so as your babysitter…”

“Hey!”

“...this is all very fucked up…”

“...I say that we wait it out, and be ready to go if she needs our help.” 

She’s probably right. If they go after Andy, they’re liable to spook her. The last thing Nicky wants is to run around Vienna with his clothes fitting poorly, looking like a seventeen year old, chasing down a girl. It’s the life that he never thought he’d have (and the one his parents desperately wished him to). He really doesn’t want to start it now. 

Sighing, Nicky relents. “Fine. I’ll call her,” he says, searching the main room to find a cell phone.

“Then, we wait.” Joe’s eyes skim Nicky’s body, biting his lip as he cards a hand through Nicky’s hair. “Maybe while we wait, we can…”

“Nope!” Nile announces sharply. 

“Aw, but Mom said I could,” Joe retorts. 

“She’s not paying me enough to let you two fuck while the walls are this thin and you’ve already had five rounds today.” 

Nicky can see the admiration in Joe’s eyes at the comeback, in the midst of his second try to get through to Andy. He’s smirking with his own amusement, thinking back to when Nile didn’t feel comfortable enough to sass them in return. That worry has melted away and Nicky’s grateful for it, because it means she’s found a place. 

“No luck,” he announces, when all his calls to Andy go straight to her voicemail.

It’s going to take every ounce of their patience to stay at the apartment and hope that Andy will come back, but it’s the best plan. Nicky does scroll through the police frequencies, praying he doesn’t hear anything about gruesome murder scenes. 

He can only imagine what Andy would do with an untoward advance. 

Hours pass, and it’s starting to feel like Nicky is going to find a gun and go after her when the lock on the door slides open. Joe sits up like a prairie dog perking up. Nile subtly shifts her phone towards the door, probably to add more pictures to whatever album she’s compiling to blackmail them. The lights are still on, none of them are sleeping, and despite Nicky’s exhaustion, he knows he’s not seeing things when Andy steps inside the apartment.

“Andy,” he breathes out.

“You’re…” Joe trails off. “Um.”

She’s _young_. She grunts as she tips her head forward, which sends her long black hair into her face, obscuring the view they can get of her. She’s a slip of a thing, using her hair to protect herself in a way that she can’t when she’s an adult. Nicky hears the intake of sharp breath, not knowing what to ask or say. 

Joe does it for him.

“Did you get it out of your system?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Andy whips her head around, fixing a possessed and demonic stare at him (though that could be the fault of her being a teenager, as they’re _terrifying_ to Nicky). She bares her teeth at him and actually growls. 

“You do remember how to speak, right?” Joe keeps baiting her, because apparently he lost some brain cells along with some of the inches around his shoulders. 

“You two are officially on my shit list,” Andy accuses, voice higher and _sweeter_ , even if there’s nothing sweet about the words. She points a finger at them. “Sleep with one eye open and be glad you can both still heal.”

She’s _definitely_ going to kill them each before this is over.

“I’m fine,” she snaps. “I’m done. I’ll wait this out, just _leave me alone_.” 

It’d be the wrong thing to snipe back at her and say that she’s acting like an immature brat. Young as he might be, Nicky still has some degree of self-preservation in his system, so he very carefully _doesn’t_ say that, but when she storms into her room and slams the door, all bets are off.

He sneers, nose wrinkling up as he mimics her with a snide, “Leave you alone, as if we didn’t do this to help you, as if we aren’t in the same boat.”

“Nicolo,” Joe lightly chides, but it doesn’t do much considering he’s snickering. 

Nile follows after her, even though she spends a long time giving Nicky a death glare. “I’m watching you,” she warns, but follows Andy into the bedroom, leaving Nicky and Joe on their own again. It’s probably a mistake. They’re no less seventeen and Nicky’s been feeling wildly aroused for hours, and he can’t even touch Joe because he promised to behave and they’ve had bigger fish to fry with Andy’s moodiness and escape tendencies. Her teenage snit isn’t exactly the best time for Nicky to solve his own problems, but he’s still willing to try.

He casts a forlorn look Joe’s way, his best puppy-dog eyes on display.

“No,” Joe says.

“I didn’t even ask for anything!”

“You are trying to seduce me.”

“Only trying?” Nicky huffs. “I thought I didn’t have to try anymore,” he complains, crawling towards Joe to slide his knee in between Joe’s thighs, tangling their legs together so that he’s mostly sitting in his lap. 

  


He doesn’t stay there long, with Joe giving him a push until he’s on his ass. “Fuck you,” he hisses. “I’m already hard. I’ve been hard every moment since I woke up. I haven’t chafed like this in fucking ages, but I’m trying to behave, and you’re there looking at me like...like…”

“Like?”

Joe pins Nicky’s shoulders to the couch, dropping down for a brutally sharp, swift, fierce kiss. “You’re looking at me like you know the secret button to press to make me come without even a touch,” he growls, clambering off Nicky as quickly as he’d pounced when Nile and Andy’s conversation seems to be getting closer. 

They wait. Andy and Nile talk, then it fades as they move away from the door. 

“You’re acting like I have mystical powers,” Nicky scoffs. 

“You do,” Joe vows. “Mystical twink powers with your too-pretty eyes and your unshaven cheeks.”

Nicky’s lip curls up with disgust. “It’s not my fault I didn’t get facial hair until I was older, you can’t just accuse me of being pretty like that, it…” He trails off, wondering why he’s so heated and angry about the fact that Joe’s just complimented him and told him that he holds some unholy power over him.

Right. The hormones. 

When this is all over, he is going to give teenagers everywhere mountains more of his patience. 

Nicky tangles their legs a little more, rubbing his foot over Joe’s ankle as he strokes his fingertips through the hair at Joe’s temples. “What else am I doing to you with my mystical twinkie powers?”

“No, Nicky, it’s…” Joe sighs, but his lips are curved up, laughing when he realizes that Nicky is fucking with him. “I love you. You know? Seventeen, thirty, thirty-three, ninety, it doesn’t matter how old we are. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Nicky promises, “but please, Yusuf, do not tempt the universe by suggesting it make us into geriatric old _nonni_.”

That earns him a sweet, fond kiss. It’s chaste enough, but it’s also the worst possible timing for Nile to discover them, leaving Andy’s room at that exact moment. 

“I thought you said you’d behave!” Nile hisses at them.

“Don’t worry, Nile, we are keeping room for Jesus between us,” Joe says with blissful calm, which makes Nicky snicker with the amusement that comes from the truth of his words. Their legs might be tangled together at the ankles, but there is space between them because they both know what happens if there isn’t.

If, suddenly, Joe were to be in Nicky’s lap (or the reverse), no one would behave for very long.

“Well, we have a problem!” 

“What problem?” Nicky asks, giving Joe’s ankles a gentle push away. 

“Andy’s gone. Again.”

Suddenly, the mood doesn’t need Jesus between them. It’s very much dead. “What do you mean, gone?” Joe asks darkly. “She said she was through with it, that she got it out of her system! You were in there with her!”

“Well, she lied. Fuck,” Nile groans. “It’s like dealing with my little brother all over, except Andy is thousands of years old and I thought she might stab me to make her escape, so I let her go out the window like the petulant teenager she is.” 

“I don’t suppose you had time to slip a tracker on her?” Nicky asks hopefully.

For once, he’s hopeful when Nile looks supremely satisfied. That's a good sign. “I managed to get her phone into her pocket and I don’t think she knows how to turn off the tracking function,” she says. “We should be able to track it, once help gets here.” She checks her watch, then her phone. “Should be any minute now, he said he was on his way.”

Nicky exchanges a wary look with Joe. “Help?” he echoes. 

“As soon as I realized I was the only adult and you two weren’t going to be near enough help, I called in the cavalry.”

“Copley?” Joe guesses, hearing the key turning in the door. “What’s that man know about parenting teenage children?”

“Nothing,” comes Booker’s voice. “Lucky for you two, I know exactly what it’s like parenting little shits,” he deadpans. “Nile called in the expert.” He drops his bag at the door, staring at them in disbelief. “Fuck, look at you two. Joe, how do you still have a full beard?”

“Lucky, I guess,” Joe replies, as if on autopilot. He’s so stunned that the vitriol is missing. Nicky is not thinking about how jealous he is of Joe’s beard. He’s not thinking about how it makes him look so very handsome and still a glimmer of himself, while Nicky is bitter about his bare cheeks that make him look too pretty, not to mention his inability to put his thick, unstyled mop of hair in check. 

(He’s trying not to think about what that says about him when he’s a thirty year old man and his hair is equally as unstyled, if only a bit shorter) 

“Nile said this happened because you were searching for a solution for Andy?” Booker asks, as Nicky tries to process the fury he’s feeling, a twist of unpleasant emotions roiling through him.

“She got dosed too,” Nile confirms, when neither Nicky nor Joe speak. “At least these two stuck around. Andy bolted, we need to get her back. Copley’s picking up the formula for an antidote, and we’re just lucky there is one,” she says, a little louder and sharper, and that’s definitely directed at Joe and Nicky. “We’ll dose them all and hope that gets them back to normal. Then, I think we stop trying to play God.”

Joe is still furious, given the way he’s crossing his arms, glaring at Booker. “I don’t want him here.”

Nicky, too, is feeling slightly more bitter than usual. He’s blaming that on his brain currently being seventeen and refusing to see sense over emotion. It means he’s glaring, too, but more because Joe is angry and he’s feeding off of it.

“Children,” Booker huffs, dropping his bag. “You can exile me again when this is done.” 

“Why wait?” Joe asks, reaching down to find the nearest blunt object (in this case, a copy of one of Booker’s favourite tomes). “Let’s make a deal. I’ll take ten years off your exile, but I get to kill you once for every year of it.”

Even Nicky thinks that’s a bit much, even if the bloodthirsty angry child inside of him screams that it would get things over with. Let Joe have his way, so Booker can come back to them, be a _family_ again.

“No,” Nile says firmly, stepping in between them and holding her arms out. “We’re going out to find Andy. Booker’s going to track her phone,” she orders, making eye contact with Booker. “And Joe, you and Nicky are going to go get dressed in something that doesn’t make you look like Macklemore’s proteges.”

Nicky squints at her, then glances to Joe, arching his brow to ask if he understands. Joe shakes his head, which puts Nicky in good company of not knowing what Nile is talking about.

She sighs. “You just look like you should be sitting around knitting, playing cards, and talking about the good old days and how sweet your grandchildren are. Can you please go put something more modern on? Joe, help Nicky?” 

“Come on, love,” Nicky coaxes, even though Nile had asked Joe to help him. He needs to pull him away from his death-glare of Booker, because it’s making _him_ mad, and he doubts they need both of them useless thanks to their irritation with their brother in arms. “You can put me in whatever you like.”

“Promise?” That gets Joe’s attention.

“I promise.” They just need to remember that this is for Andy and that Nie is probably right.

When it comes to wrangling children and dealing with fits and mood swings, Booker knows better than anyone what it’s like to put up with it. He might not even take it personally if one of them stabs him, because he’s endured worse from his _actual_ children. It is, Nicky thinks begrudgingly, a good idea.

On the other hand, Joe’s furious with Booker at the best of times and while Nicky tries to sit on the fence, his current emotional state isn’t going to help that along. 

They only need Andy to survive the night. With that in mind, Nicky follows Joe into the bedroom to suit up for a rescue mission, aligned with an unlikely ally.


	3. Chapter 3

Youthful clothes mean --

For Joe, a white t-shirt and a leather jacket, a pair of dark jeans, and his normal boots. He’s slicked back his hair just enough that the curls are trying to rebel by springing forward and his usual pendant hangs from his neck, starkly contrasted by the white cotton of his shirt. He’s lithe, lean, and dangerous, a vision to be sure. Nicky is useless every time he stares at him.

For Nicky, a v-neck burgundy t-shirt that plunges lower than he’d like (because he’s not as broad or tall as normal), a hoodie atop it, dark pleather pants that are too tight (borrowed from Nile and miracles have helped him squeeze his hips in). He’s let his hair fall loose into his eyes, mainly because Joe whines about how soft it is and Nicky would be destroying his soul if he put any gel in it.

Dressed to fit in, they head out for the night, Nicky sliding into a bomber jacket that Joe holds out to him. 

“Trust me,” is all he says, even though it will add a third layer onto Nicky. 

He does, even if it fits poorly (or at least it feels like it does). Brushing the lanky, soft strands of hair out of his face, he grabs some money and shoves the bills into his back pocket, heading out to join Nile and Booker, who are arming themselves with knives.

With a sound of alarm, both of them turn towards him with dubious looks. “Really? She’s seventeen,” he protests. “How much trouble could she…”

He trails off, thinking of her two escape attempts (both successful), her general murderous history, and _teenage hormones_ , the last of which he understands all too personally. 

“Right,” he says. “Never mind.” 

“Remembered the hormones, did you?” Joe asks sneakily, pushing Nicky out the door so they can lock up and start to follow after Nile, who has a general tracking location on Andy, but seeing as it places her in the club district, there’s any number of small bars or clubs she might have gone into. 

Nicky nods, gravely, knowing he also won’t say that to Andy’s face. 

It seems like a very swift way to coax a death.

They fall into a tight-knit group as they start heading for the clubs near the river, watching Andy’s moving blip of a target on Nile’s phone. “Are we sure it’s still her? She could have put it on a barge or a bus or a person,” Nicky points out.

“And then we have no leads,” Nile counters. “Nicky, can you please just be hopeful and optimistic about this?”

Saying nothing, he gives her two thumbs up, a dead look in his eyes as he does. His petulance is one thing. It’s not the only thing that Nile has to contend with, and given the fact that the other has been happening since they left the safehouse and has yet to stop thanks to Joe’s persistence, he’s beginning to think that Nile might regret bringing Booker in.

“What do you think, _Dad_?” Joe asks, too brightly with a sharp edge in his words. “Do you think she would’ve gone in there?” he asks, as they pass another club. “We need to find her so you can get home, we wouldn’t want you catching your death, old man.”

Nicky sees it. He sees how cruel it is, how Booker flinches every time Joe says the word, but given that he’s come back early from his banishment (and that Nicky’s vindictiveness is not helped by being seventeen), he says nothing at all about the fact that Joe has taken a veritable salt mine to dump into Booker’s wounds.

He’s strolling behind the others, constantly having to tuck his hair behind his ear, and deliberately putting space between Joe and Booker’s bickering, since he knows he won’t be able to stop it. It's a habit to take their six, but it leaves him a few paces behind and then, it separates him from the group when they make a light that Nicky misses. 

Joe notices and pauses to wait for them, a dark look on his face Nicky can’t place. He mouths ‘what?’ to try and understand, but Joe’s glare isn’t fixed on Nicky, so much as the space just behind him.

“Um, hi,” he hears, coming from that spot that Joe is glaring at. _Ah_ , thinks Nicky. That would explain it. 

Nicky turns to find a young teenager with a cross-body bag in front of him that he fidgets with. Across the street, Joe and Booker are arguing and Nile is trying to intervene, so Nicky turns his attention to the young man. His bag is adorned with pins and his curly black hair swoops over his eyebrow piercing. He’s just a little taller than Nicky, but mostly because of the very impressive heel on his combat boots.

“Hello,” he says warmly. 

“I never do this, but you’re just, you’re gorgeous. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like yours,” the boy stammers in German. “I’m an artist and I’ve been looking to sketch someone for my class. I was wondering, maybe, would you think about posing for me?” 

Nicky pushes his hair back from his eyes, glancing over to where Joe and the others are, across the street. Even from here, he sees the jealousy cross Joe’s face, and Nicky knows he should let this young man down before things get too bad. “You’re very kind,” Nicky says. “Only, I already have an artist boyfriend,” he says, gesturing across the street. “He doesn’t like it when other people sketch me.”

“Oh! Oh, uh…” The boy keeps stammering, crossing the street with Nicky when the signal changes. “Sorry!” he calls over to Joe, scattering off in the other direction. 

When Nicky turns, he sees Joe glaring daggers at the poor boy. “Yusuf,” Nicky sighs. 

“You’re too pretty like this,” Joe mutters. “Not a hair on your face, those eyes behind your hair. I should put a collar on you.”

Nicky shivers at the thought, mouth dropping.

“That only makes it worse,” Joe actually _whines_ , reaching forward to drag his thumb over Nicky’s lips. “Look how fucking pink and soft these are.” His eyes slide upwards. “They’re as soft as your hair…”

“Joe!” Booker scolds sharply. “Keep moving.”

Joe scowls, not letting go of Nicky’s face just yet. “Can I kill him, just a little? I promise, I’ll reduce his exile after to make up for it.”

Nicky isn’t swayed. Neither is Booker, who’s trying to play the sensible voice of reason and doesn’t think twice about speaking up where Nicky stays silent. “We’re here to get Andy and bring her back.”

“So we can keep her in a prison until we get the antidote?” Joe snorts derisively, shaking his head as a glimmer of disbelief flashes over his face. “How would you like it if we trapped you in a room and told you to stay?”

Nicky knows what he’d do. He’d run the first chance he got, so maybe he understands Andy all too well. 

“Joe, be nice to your father!” Nile pipes up from the front. 

Nicky isn’t sure whether it makes it better or worse that Nile is joining in, but something in Booker seems to relax when he sees that it’s become something that the whole team is doing. Maybe because it’s some kind of bonding, it makes it okay.

Nicky is about to open his mouth and sass Joe about respecting his elders when Nile comes to a stop. She looks up, then down at her phone, then up again, as if the pieces of a puzzle aren’t coming together the way she wants.

“Her phone says that she’s here,” Nile says, squinting down a dark alleyway. “Uh, this can’t be right?”

Booker sighs heavily and signals for them to follow him. “No, it’s right,” he promises. “I can hear the music.”

“Your old ears, huh?” Joe accuses.

Maybe it’s getting to be a little much, even for Nicky. He reaches out for Joe’s shoulder, squeezing it gently and pulling him flush against Nicky’s front to curl him in. “Joe,” is his gentle reprimand, not because he isn’t angry himself. He is. He’s just tired of hearing the two squabble pettily with one another, especially when Booker is only here to help. Yes, here in a parental capacity that Nicky bristles they _don’t need_ , but here to help. 

“Fine,” is what Joe says, breathing out. “I’ll ease up.”

Joe still feels tightly coiled, but Nicky understands. They’re so completely out of control right now that it helps to have one thing to focus on. Nicky’s made it their pursuit of Andy. He suspects Joe’s made it about focusing that lack of control on Booker’s presence and mercilessly prodding him for it. 

“Good catch,” Joe admits to Booker. “I was with Nile, this place didn’t look like a club.”

Booker gives a derisive snort, leading them forward towards a beat-up wooden set of doors and a small line of stragglers outside it. “Sometimes, in a foreign city, you get _really_ desperate for a drink. That’s when you find these kinds of places.”

That takes Joe by surprise, given the way his eyes widen. “Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?”

Booker’s eyes shift to Nicky, then back to Joe.

“Ah,” is all Joe says. “You know what they say about asses, right?”

“You mean assumptions?” Booker tiredly replies.

“Those too.”

Nicky can see that Nile is desperate for someone to align with her and her frustration with their lingering, but she’s not about to find an ally in Nicky. He’s too busy snickering behind a closed-mouthed smirk, jaw relaxing as he reaches over to take Joe’s hand, happily joining the line with Nile. “Are you going to pay for our cover?” he asks Booker as politely as possible. “Dad?” 

The string of French profanity should probably have been expected, but Nicky still feels elated to have been the one to encourage it this time. It’s made better by the fact that Booker digs out his wallet and slaps some Euros into Nicky’s waiting palm before storming off around the corner, clearly unhappy with this whole situation. Well, it turns out that Nicky is a bit of a hypocrite, given that he went all of a few minutes before taking that salt of Joe’s and dousing Booker’s wounds himself.

“You know,” Nile comments mildly, “you two could be nicer to him. He came to help Andy.”

“Yeah,” Joe agrees sharply. “He came for _Andy_. The same as he didn’t feel badly in that lab until _Andy_ didn’t heal. When did we hear him give a fuck about Nicky and I? We were the ones who made him feel like shit, apparently. We’re just doing it on _purpose_ now, if that’s what he expects of us.”

Nile stares at him, almost surprised to have heard it. “That’s really immature, Joe.”

“Yeah, well, I’m seventeen years old,” he retorts, “I’m allowed to be.” 

“He’s here to find Andy, so are we,” Nicky speaks up as they take a step forward towards the bouncer, closer to getting inside. Nile’s phone is still tracking Andy here, which means they don’t have far to go before they discover her. “We can deal with his purpose _later_ and our reaction, fair as it is, to it.”

Nile opens her mouth to argue, but thinks better of it.

Maybe because Nicky is glaring daggers at her, or maybe because Joe doesn’t look to be in the mood for games. They move another few steps forward, where the bouncer takes the cash (far more than the cover) and pointedly doesn’t ask for identification, but between Joe’s beard and Nile being an adult (albeit, a very youthful one), he seems willing to let Nicky slip by. 

He’s of age, he has a fake ID that puts him a few years over it, even, but Nicky is just so pretty that he’d worried there would be a problem.

The inside of the club is noisy, chaotic, and dark. Neon glimmers in the black, reflecting in the paint on people’s cheeks, lights flashing sporadically, and a drum-forward beat pounding in his ears, reverberating from the speakers near the stage. He might be young again, he might be the exact right age where he’s supposed to enjoy this, but his opinion on places like these is the same as ever.

The scowl on his face says it plainly -- give Nicky a good espresso and book any day. 

Still, there’s something to be said for watching the way Joe moves in here. He’s fluid as ever, but instead of cutting down his enemies, he’s bumping his hips against other attractive young people, smiling politely as he excuses their path. Nicky feels himself awash with all kinds of troubling emotions.

Well, he says ‘emotions’.

He’s not sure his cock has more than the one, and that’s where most of them are centred. 

“I think I see her,” Nile says, grabbing the collar of Nicky’s t-shirt so he can hear her in the noise of the club. Grateful for the distraction, Nicky lets Nile pull him along, catching up with Joe. It means he can zero in on the task and not how badly he wants to grab Joe by the loops of his jeans and pin him to the bar to make out with him until their tongues are practically tied.

He squints to see through the dark light, finding Andy on the dance floor surrounded by what he might call a harem. That’s also not surprising, both in terms of what she’d come here seeking and the fact that she’d found it so easily. 

Joe’s already sliding through the crowd towards her the instant he catches sight of Andy. “I’m on it,” he vows, and Nicky gives Nile a nod as he follows after, trying to ignore the people dancing against him, pulling him in with an arm around his neck, tugging on his hand and anchoring him back, or slapping his ass. It’s like fighting to gain ground in quicksand, if that quicksand was trying to pull you in for a dance and to make out.

“Nicky!” Joe calls, when Nicky idles trying to tell the second very nice young man in a row that he’s very handsome, but he’s not interested. 

“Coming! I’m coming,” Nicky promises, coughing slightly to try and make the sea of dancers part. 

It does nothing, and Nicky’s blood starts to boil. He puts his shoulder forward to start making progress, cursing under his breath as he tries to get to Joe, finding their way towards the middle of the club and Andy in the spotlight, dancing as if no one else exists in the world and yet, drawing every eye in the club. He’s still too far from Joe, separated by a throng of people, which seems to be getting more crowded by the second.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” comes the call from the announcer, his words in German blasting from the speakers. “Thank you for joining us tonight! We’re very excited to share that it’s your favourite even, so make some noise for the wet t-shirt contest! Send up your contestants, don’t be shy.”

Nicky pauses to scowl, muttering under his breath about objectification and crudeness, grimacing as he’s spun around by someone who wants a dance. 

“I’m not interested!” he says sharply, irritated by this distraction from his task. When he turns to lock his eyes on Joe, he’s gone. His waypoint in the crowd has vanished, while the throng shifts to turn their attention towards the stage. 

“Look at this young specimen,” the announcer practically purrs as several men volunteer to compete, out of Nicky’s line of sight, still struggling to find Joe. “What a fine young man you are, don’t be shy, come up here! Boys, help him up!”

Nicky keeps pushing forward, the crowd getting easier to move through seeing as he’s closer to the back. His eyes are fixed on Andy, who’s smirking at him with an unbearably smug look, even though they’re closing in on her and will be taking her back to the safe house. 

The reason for her smugness becomes clear a moment later, when he catches sight of said young specimen in his peripheral vision. Someone’s (and Nicky has a _very_ good idea who orchestrated this) pushed Joe right up to the stage. He’s been stripped of his jacket, standing there in his too-tight white t-shirt (one of Nicky’s), eyes scanning the crowd from his higher vantage point on the stage. Joe’s completely unaware of the water that’s coming for him, but not for long.

To his right, Nicky sees Andy watching him with a fixed stare, cocking her brows at him in challenge. Nicky can read it easily enough.

Go after her or rescue Joe, but he needs to make the choice. 

She _knows_ what he’d choose, especially when Nicky starts hearing wolf-whistles and the music takes a turn for the pornographic. He can see the eyes on Joe in the crowd, and he knows there’s no danger of Joe going home with any of them, but it’s a point of _pride_ , it’s about _respect_ , and…

“Hands off him, he’s mine!” Nicky shouts through the crowd, abandoning his chase of Andy to head for the stage, pushing a few young people out of the way, vaulting onto the stage with a single hand helping him slide his ass over the wood, crawling on his knees in front of Joe. 

His Joe, dripping wet, staring down at him.

“Keep taking it off!” someone shouts from the crowd.

“My jeans are pretty wet,” Joe admits with a wink at Nicky, who’s stumbling to his feet, blocking the club’s view of Joe. His white t-shirt is sticking to his skin and while he’s not exactly the specimen of perfection he normally is, he’s still sculpted from the same marble and Nicky will be damned if anyone else gets to see it.

Apparently, when he’s this young, his jealousy is a seething, fuming thing. He hadn’t known that the first time around, mainly because he hadn’t had anyone to feel jealous _about_ then. 

“I let Andy go to come and get you,” Nicky confesses, but he knows he’d do it again.

Andy also knows that, which is why she’d thrown Joe to the metaphorical wolves, knowing that she’d earn her freedom because Nicky has one priority above all others. 

“It’s okay,” Joe soothes. “We’re not that far behind and we know she likely made a break for the exit.” He reaches back to pluck at the back of his t-shirt, yanking the soaked thing off in one fell swoop. 

Even with the music of the club pounding, there’s no mistaking the hooting, hollering, wolf-whistles, and one actual _scream_ coming from the crowd. Nicky whips his head around to glower at _every single one of them_ , pulling Joe with him down the stairs and back into the mess of the crowd. 

“She knew I’d come for you and used you like a toy,” Nicky complains sharply, pulling off his jacket and his hoodie so he can give the latter to Joe, who trades the sopping wet shirt for it. Nicky takes the wet shirt and hurls it into the crowd and hopes it lands on someone’s head to ruin their night.

More likely, it will be grabbed by one of Joe’s new admirers and held onto for much too long as some sort of disturbing souvenir -- he really doesn’t want to think about that. 

“Don’t worry, I’m the kind of toy that only has one owner,” Joe quips with a wink, tangling his hand with Nicky’s to pull him along towards the emergency exit door at the back, not stopping even as one of the bouncers shouts that they can’t go out this way. Nicky snarls at him, a dare to try and stop them. Wisely, he doesn’t. 

He pushes the fire door open, bursting out into the alley, but she’s not here.

The clang of the door means their way back in is gone.

“ _Cazzo_ ,” Nicky hisses, nodding towards the front of the club, determined to find Andy before this entire night becomes a frustrating and useless act. The alley isn’t completely empty and while it’s a familiar face, it’s not who they’re looking for. 

“Nile!” Nicky calls over to her, as she runs to join them. She must have been on the perimetre, but she doesn’t have Andy. “Where were you?” Nicky demands. “We lost Andy!”

“You try getting through the frenzied mob,” she complains. “Once you pulled Joe off stage, it went nuts in there with people trying to replace him and prove they could do better. I went out the front, but I didn’t see her.”

Selfishly, Nicky thinks that they have no idea how much they’re missing out on -- Joe at seventeen is gorgeous and handsome. Joe at thirty-three is practically a _god_.

“No one can replace him,” Nicky growls, ignoring the image of those people inside hooting and hollering, affectionate admirers who have no idea they’d only seen a fraction of Joe’s glory. If he stops for longer than a moment to consider them (in other words, punch them for daring to think they can shout at Joe like that), then he’s not going to stop until he’s pulled off them.

The last thing they need tonight is for Nicky to get arrested, all because Nicky went back inside to deal with it. 

Luckily, Joe tangles their fingers together and gives him an encouraging nod to take his mind off them. “Come on,” he says, clearly pleased as punch at Nicky’s protectiveness. “She can’t be far.” Why wouldn’t he be so delighted? He’s wearing Nicky’s hoodie, he’s earned the entire club’s affections, and he got pulled off the stage in one of Nicky’s jealous fits, which he’s confessed before that he adores. Now, Nicky’s in the middle of yet another round of it, feeling like there’s no signs of stopping. 

Joe’s not supposed to like that, not even when he’s an adult. 

It only encourages Nicky to behave badly.

“Maybe she went down one of the other back alleys,” Nicky calls over his shoulder, tugging Joe along and trusting that he’s still there given that Joe has yet to let go of his hand. Emboldened by the new plan, he sets off quicker than before, rounding the corner at full speed, when he collides into a brick wall. It sends him staggering back, no longer having the strength of adulthood and an equivalent force to push back with. 

How did he run into a wall? Could he honestly not be looking where he’s going, and manage to be that out of it that he…

“Glad to see you found us.”

Well, that solves one mystery, seeing as walls don’t usually speak. “Booker,” he blurts out, gaping at him. Then: “Us?”

He glances to the side to see Andy scowling behind him, with one of Booker’s hands clasped on her wrist. It’s not so tight that you can see indents, but it looks plenty firm so Andy won’t make an escape without severely twisting something. 

“You got her!” Joe announces, elated and delighted, as if he’s forgotten to be angry at Booker.

“While you two were inside whipping the crowd into a frenzy that Nile got caught in, I figured I’d wait out here for her inevitable attempt at giving us the slip. Again,” he says, a stern fatherly glare on his face as he levels it on Andy. 

Even Nicky has the impulse, suddenly, to apologize. He’s not surprised when Andy ducks her head down and mumbles something along the lines of a defensive explanation, though Nicky thinks he catches a vague apology somewhere in there. What he’s more surprised about is the fact that she isn’t running, and is looking at Booker with something like renewed admiration. 

What did he say to make her demeanor change like this? 

It’s a mystery, but one he doesn’t want to fix tonight, because it’s much too late and they’ve been through _enough_. 

“Can we please go home?” Nile pleads, clearly on the same page as Nicky. “Joe’s going to catch a cold from getting forced into a wet t-shirt contest, Nicky’s going to explode with jealousy any minute and I’m feeling old,” she complains, though her gaze slides to Booker and she realizes that maybe she shouldn’t have said that, not being the eldest here. “Old, in comparison,” she amends.

All eyes are on Andy, who is guiding that decision. They could pretend that one of the others could give orders, but it’s her actions that determine if they’re going to have a quiet night or if there will be more escapades to endure. 

With one last look at Booker, Andy sullenly brushes a hand through her hair (her short nails are black with scribbled sharpie, when did they happen?) and though she says nothing, she nods. 

“Thank god,” Nicky says before he catches himself. Joe doesn’t seem to mind, draping an arm around Nicky’s shoulders to pull him in, ambling along behind Nile, Booker, and Andy as they return to the safehouse. Andy is still sullen and silent, but walks at Booker’s side, her arm slung around his waist. 

Something _definitely_ happened between them while Nicky and Joe had been escaping the...well, frenzy isn’t really a bad word for it, now is it?

“I’m so glad my boyfriend rescued me,” Joe crows smugly.

“You heard what I said to that young boy, did you?” Nicky asks, because Joe never calls him a _boyfriend_ without derisive scoffs following it.

Joe nods, giving Nicky a pleased smile. “I’m your everything, Nicky. Your artist, your partner, your boyfriend, your husband, your world and universe. I don’t mind what you call me, especially when it’s off those pretty lips.”

The flush of warmth in Nicky’s cheeks is problematic, if only because he and Joe are still seventeen, the antidote is hours away, and the walls of the safehouse are very, very thin. Their steps are slowing a little, putting more space between them and the others, because in this, he and Joe are of a like mind.

“Nile!” Nicky calls up to her. “We’ll meet you back at the apartment within the hour.”

Nile doesn’t stop, but she walks backwards while eyeing them suspiciously, casting a glance over her shoulder to make sure Andy isn’t planning to bolt again (she’s not, she’s in conversation with Booker in an old dialect of French). “Why?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at them.

“Do you really want to know, Nile?” Joe innocently replies, hand sliding from Nicky’s shoulder to grope his ass. “If we told you, we’d be breaking a promise to behave.”

She waves a hand at them, as if giving up on them. “One hour,” she warns, “and then I bring the search party and the next bucket of water over _both_ your heads won’t be as enjoyable as the one inside that club.” 

Joe grins, tugging on Nicky’s hand to get him to stop when they pass a nondescript alleyway that he wouldn’t have even considered if he had his normal mature brain assisting him. He doesn’t, though. He has an idiot teenager’s libido coaxing him along and Joe’s winsome smile and charming wink isn’t helping matters.

“It’s not like we can catch diseases,” he reasons out loud, looking _past_ the (probably) tetanus-laden bricks, stray metal pieces, and more. 

“Nope,” Joe agrees, already heading into the alley so he can press his back against the wall, crooking his finger to beckon Nicky closer. “Come here and let me show you just how much I’m yours. You deserve a reward for rescuing me in the club from all those ne’er-do-wells.”

What harm can one night making irresponsible choices in an alley have?

Tomorrow, they’ll take the antidote from Copley and get back to their normal selves. 

Tonight? Well, tonight, Nicky has earned himself a reward and he intends to enjoy it.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, Copley arrives with the vials and a newspaper in front of his eyes, which blocks his easy entrance to the apartment. He nearly knocks over the lamp in the living room, if not for Nicky’s quick reach to catch it.

Joe gives Nicky a puzzled look at Copley’s appearance, but Nicky doesn’t know why he’s looking at _him_ and not demanding answers from Copley. “What?” Nicky demands, “I’m supposed to understand?” 

He’s in a mood. After they got Andy back, they had set up a schedule to keep an eye on her. Her promise to stay put sounded sincere and all, but they had already been fooled twice. They’d locked all the doors and windows, removed all the weapons from the room, and then sat up with her in shifts while also trying _not_ to make it overtly seem like they were keeping watch. For all that Nicky had been prepared for a battle, he hadn’t been prepared for what _actually_ happened when it was his turn.

He won’t even tell Joe, because he thinks if he confesses that Andy spent a good thirty minutes hugging a pillow and crying silently, he both wouldn’t believe him and Andy would kill him.

It means he’s exhausted, he’s overly aroused (and has been ever since the wet t-shirt contest and their two rounds in the alley last night), and he feels very emotionally uncomfortable with witnessing his boss break down in front of him. He’s not in the mood for whatever antics Copley feels inclined to partake in.

“I don’t need to see any of you looking young enough to be my sons or daughter,” is Copley’s explanation, keeping the newspaper in front of him, though it nearly falters when he sees, “Booker?” in his peripheral vision.

“Copley,” Booker replies evenly. “Don’t worry. I’m still old.”

Nicky isn’t in the mood for any of this. He lunges forward to grab the briefcase Copley is carrying, mindful not to duck under the block of the newspaper. “Is this it? The antidote?” He unloads four vials, handing one to Joe as Nile leaves the room to fetch syringes. “Will it be the same as last time, a twenty-four delay?”

“It shouldn’t,” Copley says, eyes on the ceiling. “They built in a time release system in the last ones, but I told them that the sooner this drug hit your system, the better.” 

“Smart move. They’re insufferable like this,” Booker says, staring at them pointedly. 

“I will kill you,” Joe hisses at him. 

“No, you won’t,” Nicky groans with relief as Nile loads up the first shot. “Because I want to do it first, for putting me on the first shift with Andy.” It meant he had to witness the awkward crying and for that, he thinks he deserves to put something sharp in Booker.

He really hopes that when he’s back to his normal mental and emotional age, he won’t have so many stabby thoughts. Usually, those are reserved for the people he hates, not the ones who have mildly inconvenienced him. He wants to be done with the overreactions, and is overly grateful for Nile’s steady hand as she pushes his sleeve up to inject him. 

“Fingers crossed you don’t get _too_ old, right?” she jokes.

Nicky can see the way Copley goes pale at the idea. “Don’t worry, we won’t let you go until you get it right,” he says, overly calm as he takes another vial to load up a shot for Joe, giving him a warm smile as he plunges it gently into his upper arm. “Besides, Joe said he’d still love me, no matter what age we were.”

“I will,” Joe vows. “I’d prefer that Booker doesn’t get to have his revenge by calling me grandpa in public, though, so here’s hoping this works properly and I can love my Nicky at the exact right age.”

Booker coughs out, “Insufferable,” but hasn’t left, so he can’t be too bothered.

“It’s specifically targeted to undo the work of the first drug,” Copley says. “We took the cells from…”

“Copley,” Nicky interrupts him. “Trust me. We don’t want to know.”

He thinks they’ve learned their lesson when it comes to untested drugs made from immoral research. Of all people, he should have known better. His penance for playing with forces he should have left alone had been youth, an ironic consequence given the idiocy and folly of his choices. 

With Nicky and Joe dosed, that leaves one left to do. Andy. “Draw straws?” Booker suggests, once their attention turns to Andy’s closed bedroom door.

“This is insane,” Nile protests. “She’s just a teenage girl!”

“Is that you volunteering?” Joe asks calmly.

There’s a long beat of silence, Nile’s eyes skirting between the group of them. “...fine. Draw straws,” she mutters, which is as good as her admitting that Andy is a terrifying force of nature when she’s her normal self and is equally and forcefully, powerfully, scarily more dangerous with the energy of a teenage girl behind her.

Booker returns with straws, holding them in his closed fist.

Nicky draws first, a long straw. Copley goes next, drawing the same. That’s a relief, given that he’s the only one here that wouldn’t actually survive a dangerous encounter if it turned lethal. Nile eyes Joe and Booker, narrowing her eyes as she leans in to pluck a straw from his hand, pulling and then…

“Oh, fuck you all,” she groans, when Booker and Joe take their turns revealing that it’ll be Nile’s journey into the unknown after all. She grabs the syringe, waving it at Nicky and Joe. “You two owe me for this.”

Nicky doesn’t see why. She’d been every bit as involved in the process of developing this drug to help Andy. Just because she’d been the only one wise enough not to test it on herself doesn’t mean that suddenly they need to pay her back. 

So instead, he smiles and takes Joe’s hand, pausing only to look at Booker, not sure what they’re supposed to do. Do they exile him again? Should they give him a task to do while they wait?

“I guess you should stay,” Nicky says, sounding as puzzled as he feels about the conundrum. “For now.”

He glances to Joe, who shrugs, clearly having no good idea himself. That means they probably need to wait for Andy, which means there’s hours to go before all three of them are back in a mature state of mind, able to make a decision about this without their teenaged hormones swaying like a pendulum between impulse and other ridiculous ideas.

Booker being here doesn’t mean they have to spend their time talking to him, so they let Booker talk to Copley as they wait for Nile to finish the job. She’s back in five minutes with an empty vial that she hands back to Copley.

“You’re burning this, right?”

Copley nods. “The research is already grabbed. Don’t worry.”

“We’ll make sure of that,” Booker replies, a steely calm in your voice. “Nile, you want to come with me to make sure the lab has nothing of ours left?”

“Why not us?” Joe pipes up, as bitter as ever.

“Because I don’t need you on CCTV when you suddenly rip your shirt because you went from seventeen to thirty-three instantly.” He frowns, glancing at Copley. “Does it happen instantly? Did it?” he asks, his gaze now on Nicky and Joe.

“We don’t know, we woke up like this,” Nicky protests, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He wonders if it will stay this long and if he’ll need to shear it off, or whether his body’s return to age will snap back into place like muscle memory and return him to the way he used to be.

Nile’s staring at Joe, though, not paying attention. “I know it’s probably more realistic that it’s gradual, but the image of you hulking out is pretty great.”

Nicky mouths ‘hulking out’ at Joe, who shakes his head in equal confusion.

“Let’s go dismantle the lab,” Nile agrees, grabbing her coat. “You two are on Andy duty until we get back. Got it?” There’s an unspoken threat in her words that if they get distracted and let her go, they’re going to regret it, but luckily Nicky and Joe managed to get any pent-up sexual frustration out between the alley last night and a quickie this morning when Joe slid back into bed after his shift. 

Copley goes with them, and he _still_ hasn’t looked at them once by the time he closes the front door behind him.

His loss, thinks Nicky. 

The silence of the apartment highlights the rustling in Andy’s room (proof that she’s still there), but the day draws out before them with another untested drug in their arms. 

They both bustle around with their own activities, mainly to keep distracted both from the drug that’s in their veins they’re worried about and the fact that that getting distracted would allow Andy to get the drop on them. They’ve already embarrassed themselves enough over the last few days, they don’t need to add to the pile.

Joe sketches fiendishly, going through at least five pages in the time it takes Nicky to scrub down the counters. He does a deep clean on the stovetop, then puts on the ingredients for manicotti, the sauce permeating the apartment with a deep, rich tomato smell. 

For a moment, he thinks maybe it will lure Andy out, but an hour passes with no sign of her.

His cooking also doesn’t magically age them back up, because through dinner and even after when they settle in to watch television, they remain seventeen. Nicky wriggles to curl a little tighter into Joe’s hold, reaching for the blanket to drape over the both of them. In complete contrast to their youthful appearance, their actions are anything but -- Jeopardy plays on the television in German on the television, and they’re both fully clothed, bickering over the answers. 

That’s how Nile and Booker find them when they return, making a big show of unlocking the door, knocking multiple times at the same time.

“We’re decent,” Nicky says heatedly, already anticipating the comments given the look on Nile’s face and the way Booker seems to be biting his tongue. He flips the blanket up to prove it, but that brings a rush of cool air rushing in.

Joe yelps, glaring at them. “Happy, now? It’s freezing in here, it’s practically the same temperature as Nicky’s icy toes,” he gripes, grabbing at the blanket as he stands. He wraps it over his shoulders like a cape, stomping off to the bedroom in a fuss. 

Nicky watches him go with forlorn eyes, turning that on the others. 

“Now look what you made him do,” he mutters, aware that he’s sulking about the fact that Joe just stormed off like some spoiled little princeling. 

“And yet, we don’t feel bad,” Nile retorts. “Is Andy still here?”

“Andy?” Nicky shouts.

“Stop worrying about me!” Andy shouts right back at him.

Nicky gestures to the door as if to say ‘there you have it’, and stands, because his work is done. “There’s cold manicotti in the fridge with some rapini,” he advises. “I’m going to go to bed.”

“Hopefully in the morning, your face will remember how to grow a beard,” Booker deadpans, heading to the fridge to duck his head inside and search for something to drink. 

Standing the way he is, Nicky considers picking up his sword and jamming it through Booker’s stomach. It would be a completely fair thing to do, but maybe a little immature. Plus, does he want to get blood all over the leftovers? No. No, he doesn’t. Clearly, though, the drug has yet to kick in, if he’s still thinking this way.

(That, or he just has to admit that maybe he’s not as mature as he’d like to think)

Instead of giving in to his baser urges, Nicky heads to the bedroom to join Joe, who’s bundled himself under the duvet along with the blanket from the living room.

“Room for one more?” Nicky asks hopefully.

Joe shares a brilliantly warm smile with him, lifting the blankets up. “For you? Always.”

Nicky crawls in and, like he always does, and presses his cold and icy toes against Joe’s calves, enjoying the way he flails out, nearly smacking Nicky in the face with one of his long, lanky arms. Nicky cackles at the reaction, yanking the blanket a little tighter around them, burrowing in as he presses a kiss to the tip of Joe’s nose.

“It’s been nearly a thousand years, you should know that’s coming by now.”

“Every time it happens, I forget _how cold_ they are,” Joe gripes, maneuvering Nicky so that he’s lying on his back, with Joe wrapped around him. It’s not their usual position, but it allows Joe to look at him, watch him, and keep an eye on progress. “How much longer do you think you’ll have icy seventeen year old toes instead of mature thirty year old toes?” 

“It took a day last time,” Nicky reminds Joe, teasingly pressing those cold toes against Joe’s feet, snickering as Joe plays a mildly combative game of footsie to keep him slightly away. “But I know when I wake up, I want it to be as we normally are.”

Joe sleepily smiles down at him, no longer battling with his feet. His face is still devoid of laugh lines, wrinkles, and other small hints of age. He is untouched (...well, in some ways) and beautiful, and Nicky is so immensely glad that they have drawings and photos and sketches plenty to commemorate this brief glance back into their pasts.

“Mm, you’re worried you’ll wake up with this frizzy mess of hair in your mouth,” he jokes, giving his hair a gentle tug.

Nicky snorts with laughter, wrapping his long, lean arms around Joe’s waist, aware this isn’t how they normally sleep, but he wants to look at him as long as he can. “It’s like choking on a shag rug.”

“If choking’s what you want…”

Nicky keeps snort-laughing as he pushes Joe’s face away, even if that means denying a very messy, possessive kiss. He comes back around because going to bed without a proper kiss from Joe is madness. Straining over his shoulder to steal it, he settles back into Joe’s arms, thumb stroking circles against the skin of his palm as he thinks about going back to normal. 

“I liked being young with you again,” he has to admit, in the lull of their steadily deepening breaths. Joe tightens his hold on Nicky, possessively tight, and a tacit agreement. “I don’t think we would have liked each other much, at seventeen where we were, but I think maybe we would have found our way together somehow. You could have shown me that I didn’t have _enemies_ , only a hateful voice preaching such things in my ear.”

“You at seventeen, me at twenty,” Joe muses, breath as soft as his voice in Nicky’s ear, “meeting in a port in Genoa while I tried to show you the world that you’d been missing.” 

Nicky hums softly. “It’s a nice thought.”

“It’s a nice fantasy,” Joe corrects, his words sleepy. “Reality is a lot better, even with this strange little glimpse into the other side.” He burrows into Nicky’s back, groaning as he wraps his leg around Nicky’s hip. “Go to sleep,” he whispers. “Maybe if the puberty fairy is _very_ good to you, you’ll be back to normal in the morning.”

That earns a swift muttering under Nicky’s breath about missing inches for _both_ of them, but Joe must be truly exhausted, because he doesn’t argue back. 

He lets the soothing pace of Joe’s breathing take him to sleep, where he dreams of being in Malta, where they are grown and mature and living the lives they were meant to. 

When he wakes, Nicky feels something constricting his breathing. Something is pinching him, much too tightly. It takes him a moment to understand that he’s not feeling ill, but it’s that he’s trapped in a t-shirt that’s constricting him at the shoulders. He worries that if he moves too much, it will tear at the seams, so he tries to keep his motions small. He slides his hand to his hair to find it shorter again, and a cursory slide of his palm over his face reveals the small lines he’d once had, along with a rough scrape of stubble.

Swifter than twenty-four hours, then.

Nicky smells something cooking on the stove, but given that Joe is still sleeping behind him, Nile has called dibs on not cooking, and Booker has never been one to wake up and make breakfast, that can only leave one possibility. 

He presses a kiss to the space between Joe’s shoulder blades, taking that extra moment to appreciate the breadth of them now that Joe is back to his adult self. Nicky is as stupidly fond and loving as ever, and it had been a treat to have Joe at seventeen, but he wants him like this for eternity because Joe, like this, is the man that fits the other half of his soul.

Creeping out towards the kitchen, Nicky pulls on one of Joe’s sweaters, closing the bedroom door gently behind him. He finds Andy in the kitchen, wielding a knife and slicing onions and garlic, already making the kitchen rich with the smell. She’s grown too, which makes Nicky wonder just how long it was that they’d been sleeping. 

“What are you doing?” he asks quietly.

“I’m making apology pasta.”

Nicky raises a brow. “You haven’t made that since the 1700’s.” It had been an apology, then, after she had beheaded Nicky and stabbed Joe in the heart when they had tried to stop her from going after Quynh. They shouldn’t have taken her by surprise, admittedly, but she’d felt bad enough to pour hours into cooking. 

“I’m making it now,” she says defensively. “Unless you don’t want it?”

“No, I never said that,” Nicky quickly soothes, not wanting to piss her off. “I just don’t understand why you think you should be apologizing to us. We gave you a poorly-tested drug that made you seventeen again. If anything, it should be us making apology baklava.”

“You did,” Andy admits. “But you thought you tested it, and you put yourselves in the same boat as I was in, and you did it for me. You did it because you wanted to give me a chance with Quynh, and even though I didn’t ask for it, I appreciate it. Besides, I think you suffered plenty having to wrestle Joe from the hands of a hundred hot young Viennese men eager to pry his wet t-shirt off because I shoved him to the wolves.”

Nicky snorts with laughter, thinking of the momentary flash of panic on Joe’s face as he faced down that particular mob.

“What was it like to be so young again?” he asks. 

Andy reaches for another onion, slicing off the ends as she considers his question. “I felt like a stranger. I think you can probably relate. It’s been so long since I was so young, I didn’t know what to do feeling too big for my own body, frustrated that I wasn’t in control, and yet, at the same time, _free_.”

“Is that why you went to the club? So you could feel free?”

She shrugs, continuing to slice the onion. “Maybe. For once, I could be someone else. Young like that, it was easy to pretend that I wasn’t mortal or as old as I am. I could be a girl standing in a club, that no one knew, that no one would hunt down. It felt like a safe way to get my adrenaline going. I _had_ hoped to pick someone up, but _Dad_ ruined that,” she jokes wryly. 

“You know,” Nicky says, amusement playing in his words, “I think maybe we could end Booker’s exile and replace it with a new punishment. Another few decades of us calling him Dad and Father at every turn would be more than enough suffering.” 

Andy’s smile was rueful and fond. “He was really good with me, you know. You and Joe missed it, but I got to see the father and not the fighter. Broke my heart a little,” she admits, “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose your children and have to go on from that. I’m not excusing what he did,” she promises, when Nicky opens his mouth to speak, “I’m just saying that maybe we never stopped to think, back in those days, that we didn’t know what Booker was going through and expected him to fall in line.”

Maybe they should have tried. Maybe Booker should have spoken up. Maybe it’s pointless to think about the past, which they’ve learned they can’t undo.

“Is that agreement to end his exile?”

“Seeing as you’re not going to have me to find and help Quynh, you should have all hands on deck,” Andy admits, reaching for another onion to slice. “From what Booker tells me from his run in with her in Paris, she’s not in the best state of mind and she’s still a pit viper. She’s a survivor. She’ll figure out how to navigate this world and you’ll need every ally you can get.”

“I really wanted it to work, Andy,” Nicky says quietly, the pain heavy in his words.

Andy cups his neck as she brings him in for a hug, the frilly edges of her apron (a strange sight to see) brushing against Nicky’s arm. “I know you did, Nicky,” she says, giving him a sad smile. “As much as I’ve come to terms with my situation, I wanted it to work, too.” She releases him with another kiss to his temple, returning to her onions.

It didn’t work, and that’s going to have to be what they live with. 

“Should I ask whether Nile has enough blackmail material on the two of you or… _fuck_ ,” she hisses, yelping. She yanks her fingers away from the knife, where she’s sliced her thumb open. 

Nicky’s eyes widen in alarm, reaching for a tea towel. “Give it here,” he coaxes, stepping forward to help Andy before she bleeds out in the middle of preparations for their apology meal.

Not that she will from a thumb wound, but he really doesn’t want to lose Andy because of onions and garlic. 

Nicky takes hold of her wrist to gently hold her hand, flipping the tea towel over his shoulder so he can turn her palm upwards and get a better look at the wound to see how deep it is and whether it will need stitches. Reaching for a damp paper towel, he wipes away at the blood, carefully, dabbing away the blood, before wiping it again. “You gave me the wrong hand,” he complains.

“No,” Andy replies, gritting her teeth together, “I’m right-handed, I gave you my left hand that I sliced into.”

She’s right. Nicky is holding her left hand, but there’s no wound.

“Joe!” Nicky shouts, alarmed. “Booker! Nile!” 

There’s joy practically leaping in his tone, heart thumping in his chest with desperate hope. Maybe failure isn’t something they have to live with after all. His eyes are wide as he gapes at Andy, shaking his head. 

“I don’t...I don’t understand.” How could it have worked? It didn’t when she was a teenager. She’d still been mortal, but somehow between then and taking the antidote, Andy’s abilities have come back. 

For all that Andy’s been in a moody snit for the last few days, there’s no mistaking the bright smile on her lips that speaks of an _excellent_ mood now. Nicky thinks it might even be the happiest he’s seen her since the 16th century, and he has a good idea as to why. Joe hurries into the room, clad in a pair of Nicky’s pajama pants that are falling down thanks to the drawstring not being tied.

Booker coughs from behind him. “Joe,” he mutters, “Pull ‘em up.”

“You’ve seen worse,” Joe replies, even as he’s tying them up (mostly because Nile _hasn’t_ seen worse and she’s right there behind Booker, peering over his shoulder into the small kitchen to see what the fuss is). “What’s with the noise and the chaos?” 

“I guess it’s not my time,” Andy admits, holding up her blood-stained hand, without a single wound to account for it. 

“She’s healing?” Joe asks Nicky, as if Andy isn’t standing right there.

Nile shoves past the two men, tackling Andy with a hug. Nicky would feel a little left out (and upset) that he didn’t get a hug when he returned to normal, but he didn’t suddenly become immortal again. He understands. Besides, he’s got Joe crossing the room to drape his arm around Nicky’s shoulders, kissing his cheek and whispering, “good work, _habibi_ ,” right in his ear. 

Even Booker looks...well, relieved. Nicky knows that he blamed himself, to a degree. They can’t prove that he did anything to make Andy become mortal, but the timing and his subsequent gunshot hadn’t exactly helped matters. 

Nile still has Andy tight in her arms, even as Andy protests. “All right, enough! Enough,” she laughs, pushing her away with a mildly stern look. “I’m going to be around for a long time, you can hug me later.”

“I will,” Nile warns, backing up. “How did this work? I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I,” Joe echoes, perplexed. “I guess Copley’s fix was never in the initial drug, but in the antidote?”

“Or,” Booker pipes up, “you have to age down and your body rewrites your genetic code as you age back up?”

They’re all possible explanations, but Nicky thinks that it doesn’t matter _how_. It only matters that it did happen. “Destiny,” he decides, and that’s that. However the universe wanted Andy to remain immortal, it’s found a way through science and their determination. “Who are we to ask beyond that?” says a man who’s stopped asking why they’re all immortal to begin with. 

Andy and Booker roll their eyes, which is completely _like_ them that it draws a laugh from Nicky, who appreciates them now more than ever. Nicky shakes his head, feeling breathlessly hopeful and _relieved_ that his own fatalistic words haven’t come to pass, that he has his whole team back. “What are you going to do first, boss?”

“First,” she says, eyes flicking over her team, “I’m throwing out the blood-soaked garlic, because that’s not a good meal. Second, we’re eating my apology pasta that I worked so hard on.”

“And then?” Joe prods, even though they all know the answer.

“And then we go after Quynh because I’m fucking _immortal_ and I can die as many times as it takes to get her back with us.”

It sounds like the very best plan in the world. Nicky can’t imagine doing anything else with their years, and he remains grateful to the universe that it’s decided that for this, Andy has to stick around a little while longer.

“What do you say?” she asks them, her gaze fierce with determination and purpose.

Nicky grins and knows that he’s in, the same as the rest of them. “We’re with you, boss.”


End file.
